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Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Allina Hospitals & Clinics (Allina) is an 11-hospital, 23,000-employee provider of health care services for citizens of Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. In support of the provider’s leading approach to One Patient, One Record, Excellian electronic health record strategy, Allina makes extensive use of a fleet of laptop and tablet computers. Having experienced a sharp increase in laptop theft including one incident requiring public disclosure of breached health information, Allina sought a high-tech. solution for laptop management and data breach protection. After a review of available products, Allina selected ComputraceComplete with Remote Data Delete from Absolute Software. Using Computrace, IT staff have dramatically reduced laptop theft, recovered several stolen computers and improved laptop auditing accuracy from 30% to more than 95%. With Computrace as a complement to Allina’s Utimaco encryption system, the provider is confident that it is delivering the highest level of protection for its laptop computers and the sensitive health information stored on them. One Patient, One Record
As the state of Minnesota’s major healthcare provider, Allina Hospitals & Clinics operates a system made up of 11 hospitals, more than 75 clinics, 15 community pharmacies, 5,000 physicians and 4 ambulatory care centers. In 2004, Allina began implementing Excellian One Patient, One Record – one of America’s most comprehensive electronic health record systems. With the system available across all Allina facilities by 2009, One Patient One Record makes important medical information about each patient easily accessible to front-line caregivers.
The Movement Towards Mobility
In another demonstration of technology adoption, Allina is rapidly increasing the number of portable laptop and tablet computers they provide to nurses, physicians and other mobile employees to allow for better patient care. However, with the move toward portable computers, Allina’s IT team found that computer theft and the potential of data breach became an increased concern.
According to Brad Myrvold, the hospital system’s Manager of Desktop Technology, “Laptop computers are a powerful tool in the hands of a physician or a home care nurse. They put information right at the caregiver’s fingertips and streamline administrative processes. Ultimately, they help our facilities deliver better patient experiences and outcomes. For the IT team however, they are a challenge. Our existing IT asset management system could only track assets that are on the network and these devices come back into our facilities at a fraction of the rate we are comfortable with. While we use Utimaco encryption on all of our mobile computers, there is always a risk that an unencrypted computer will be stolen. In fact, it was the theft of an unencrypted computer from a nurse that caused us to seek out Computrace in the first place.”
Data Breach
In early 2007, an Allina nurse stopped her car in front of a hospital facility to run inside and deliver a time-sensitive package to waiting staff. While she was in the facility, a thief broke into her car and made off with a laptop – that contained the health information of several patients. As a result, the hospital system was required to publicly announce the data breach and provide credit monitoring services for the affected patients. “This incident was the event that triggered a change in how we managed portable devices,” says Myrvold. “Since we began to use laptops extensively, we had experienced a sharp increase in computer theft but this was the first time we had lost a laptop with this type of data on it.
Laptop security was a potential hole in our otherwise robust data security strategy”. Two months after the data breach, Myrvold and his team began implementing Computrace IT asset management, theft recovery and data protection software on all of Allina’s mobile computers.
Computrace Secures Mobility
“Before Computrace, when we set up a new laptop for a physician or nurse, approximately 70% of the time we literally never saw that computer again. It would go off into our business units and sometimes returned when it was time for it to be replaced. We had no insight into what was happening,” says Myrvold. “Computrace immediately gave us visibility into our laptop population. We can see where the laptop is, who is logging in and what software is installed.
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