FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- Courion(R) Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise provisioning solutions, today announced that the Indiana University (IU) Medical Group, the clinical practice of the IU School of Medicine's faculty physicians, has selected Courion's PasswordCourier(R) as part of its identity management strategy to protect patient data, ensure employee validation and authentication, manage IT access rights and support HIPAA compliance efforts.
Affiliated with both the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County, IU Medical Group is responsible for managing internal access to network, email and other business applications, providing access to users at the two parent organizations, and providing extranet access for partners and clients of the company's third-party administrator services. With the aim to facilitate caregiver access to resources and increase the efficiency of business operations, IU Medical Group needed a solution to automate the manual, costly process of managing passwords.
Automating critical business processes like password management is a particular area of focus because of the group's turnover of staff and physicians in training. Resources must be terminated for the outgoing group of physicians and staff members to eliminate any security loopholes, and access must be activated for the incoming users so that they can achieve maximum productivity immediately. In addition, partners and third party administrator clients need immediate access to specific business applications to perform functions such as looking up claims eligibility or determining if a provider is within a specific network.
IU Medical Group's method for password management was completely manual, requiring an average of three days to generate a password reset. The implications of this slow, cumbersome process could be critical including a doctor's inability to gain immediate access to important and time sensitive patient data. In addition, valuable IT assets were dedicated to these manual tasks, taking them away from higher order initiatives.
After an initial deployment of PasswordCourier, IU Medical Group has already reduced password reset calls from three days to a few minutes. The company has been able to reassign its resources to other IT needs including a critical server upgrade and the relocation of its entire administrative office, including the IT department and server room. In addition, initial employee feedback on self-service capabilities has been very positive and adoption is growing rapidly.
Courion was the only vendor to uniquely meet IU Medical Group's needs by providing a flexible solution that can easily adapt to the organization's homegrown applications. PasswordCourier offered a fast implementation with out-of-the-box functionality ensuring a seamless deployment and rapid ROI. As an organization that deals with time sensitive and crucial patient data, the company recognized the need for a technology solution to automate key processes, alleviate access roadblocks and increase operational efficiency.
"PasswordCourier was the only solution of those we looked at that offered the flexibility and adaptability to allow us to leverage our existing infrastructure," said Paul Hankins, IT director and security officer of IU Medical Group. "Nothing else came close to matching the ease of implementation. We are extremely satisfied with the results we have seen so far with Courion."
IU will complete the initial deployment by mid-February and expects to be fully deployed across all departments and 18 geographical locations by May 2005. According to Hankins, as part of its identity management strategy, the organization is looking to implement additional capabilities including user provisioning, to enable ongoing compliance and to manage the constant change and organizational dynamics of the business.
"IU Medical Group services internal and external users that require immediate and appropriate access to the network, e-mail system and the Intranet through which individuals can gain access to data for critical patient or clinical information," said Deb Pappas, vice president of marketing for Courion Corporation. "Courion's solutions are built specifically to enable the IT infrastructure to respond quickly and effectively, to ensure users have immediate access to the information they need to best serve their customers."
Courion has over 240 enterprise customers worldwide including leading healthcare organizations such as Blue Cross Blue Shield Alabama, Children's Hospital Boston, HEALTHSOUTH, Highmark, Inc., Kaiser Permanente, Sharp HealthCare, VCU Health Systems, and Capital District Physicians Health Plan.
About IU Medical Group
IUMG is the clinical practice of the IU School of Medicine's faculty physicians. Synonymous with quality health care, IU Medical Group physicians combine teaching medical students and clinical research with patient care to ensure patients receive the latest, most advanced treatments available. IUMG specialists collaborate with IUMG Primary Care physicians to meet all the health care needs of the patient. Choosing an IU Medical Group physician means you have access to caring physicians -- who are internationally recognized in their specialty and are available at some of the finest hospitals throughout Indiana.
About Courion
Courion Corporation enables complex organizations to rapidly respond to constant change. Unlike traditional identity and access management technologies, Courion provides the first flexible Enterprise Provisioning Suite(TM) to ensure continuous compliance, maximize existing resources, and manage evolving IT and business requirements. Over 240 enterprise customers worldwide including 60 of the FORTUNE 500 utilize the Suite to securely automate routine, manual processes for user provisioning, password management, industry and regulatory compliance, profile management, and digital certificate management. By leveraging the existing infrastructure and integrating disparate workflows within the enterprise, Courion solutions enable business velocity, drive operational efficiency, ensure ongoing policy compliance and reduce costs. For more information, contact Courion's headquarters in Framingham, MA, USA at 508-879-8400 or visit www.courion.com.
Courion is a registered trademark and Identity Management Suite is a trademark of Courion Corporation.
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