Sharp HealthCare Streamlines Identity Management and Access Control with Caradigm's Integrated IAM Suite

BELLEVUE, Wash. and SAN DIEGO, Aug. 7, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Sharp HealthCare, San Diego's largest healthcare system, is providing new clinicians with same-day access to the clinical applications they need for their roles.  When provisioned, these clinical applications are already integrated with single sign-on and context management, allowing clinicians to view a specific patient's record in context across all of their applications.

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Using an integrated Identity and Access Management (IAM) suite from Caradigm, Sharp is reducing stress for its physicians and nurses while augmenting their ability to deliver excellent, timely patient care.  Caradigm^TM Provisioning enables clinical applications to be set up for new caregivers the day they start, and Caradigm^TM SSO and Context Management provide caregivers the ability to use those clinical applications more safely and efficiently. Having a standardized, role-based process and automated provisioning tool has also freed Sharp's IT team from an ongoing burden of delays, costs and help desk calls.

"In the past, nurses and doctors typically needed several weeks to get up to speed, so it wasn't a problem that it took us an average of 21 days to fulfill an onboarding clinician's request for access," said Linda Hill, manager of Sharp's Technical Assistance Center. "Today, they arrive fully trained and ready to hit the floor running, which means same day access to systems and applications is critical. Caradigm's IAM suite makes it easy for us to give every caregiver the right access to the right applications and right patient data starting day one."

Jim Campbell, vice president of IAM for Caradigm, added, "Healthcare IT departments face a difficult balancing act of providing very fast access to data while ensuring compliance with data privacy and security requirements. Caradigm's integrated IAM suite is unique in the industry for focusing on both, enabling IT to meet the efficiency goals of caregivers while supporting the privacy and compliance objectives of the organization. We're very pleased with the results achieved by Sharp Healthcare in these areas."

With large and dynamic workforces, health systems and hospitals face a uniquely complex set of challenges related to identity management and data access. Caradigm Provisioning 4 features new role management capabilities that can accelerate the onboarding of new clinicians or the management of existing clinicians.  "We know that clinicians don't come into the system and stay in the same department doing the same job," said Hill. "They move around, they go back to school and get new degrees, get promoted, go from nurse to doctor. We have to adjust for these changes as quickly as possible, because every minute of downtime detracts from the quality of care clinicians can provide."

With Caradigm's integrated IAM suite, system administrators at Sharp can now define roles across the organization, and assign policies and access rights to specific clinical functions. This not only streamlines the provisioning process but also reduces the potential for granting inappropriate access. Organizational policies, roles and entitlements are stored centrally in the provisioning system and can be modified as needed. Managers can also use identity analytics to validate user accounts and ensure that access rights align with specified clinical roles.

About Sharp HealthCare

A 2007 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient, Sharp HealthCare is San Diego's most comprehensive healthcare delivery system. It has received recognition for clinical excellence for services in cardiac, cancer and multi-organ transplantation as well as orthopedics, rehabilitation, behavioral health and women's health. Sharp HealthCare has been widely acclaimed for its commitment to transform the healthcare experience for patients, physicians and staff through an organization-wide performance improvement initiative called The Sharp Experience. This initiative has resulted in numerous advances in clinical outcomes, patient safety enhancements and organizational and service improvements. The Sharp system comprises four acute-care hospitals, three specialty hospitals, two affiliated medical groups and a health plan. It lists 2,600 affiliated physicians and employs approximately 15,000 total staff. 

About Caradigm

Caradigm is a healthcare analytics and population health company dedicated to helping organizations improve care, reduce costs and manage risk. Caradigm analytics solutions provide deep insight into patients, populations, processes and performance, enabling healthcare organizations to understand their clinical and financial risk and identify the actions needed to address it. Caradigm population health solutions enable teams to deliver the appropriate care to patients through effective coordination and patient engagement from hospital to clinic to home, improving outcomes and financial results. The key to Caradigm analytics and population health solutions is a rich set of clinical, operational and financial data delivered to healthcare professionals within their workflows in near real time. This data asset serves as the foundation for a growing number of innovative healthcare applications developed by Caradigm and industry partners, providing rapid incremental value to customers.

Caradigm is a trademark of Caradigm USA LLC.

SOURCE Caradigm