The Efficient, First Line of Defense

When it comes down to why the Albany, Ga.-based Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, a 450-bed community-based hospital, decided to implement a single sign-on (SSO) solution, the reason wasn’t complex or profound. Quite simply, as Phoebe Putney Memorial director of tech services, Michael Elder, puts it, the hospital’s physicians were dealing with multiple log-in passwords from various different systems, even within its EHR from McKesson Corp. (San Francisco, Calif.). “We knew it was becoming a bigger and bigger problem as we rolled out these new applications for clinical systems, EMRs, and those types of things,” Elder says. After going through a vendor selection process, Phoebe Putney chose Imprivata’s (Lexington, Mass.) OneSign Single-On for the SSO solution. The hospital went through a year-long implementation process throughout its entire organization, starting with nurses and working their way to the physician community. The physicians were so impressed, Elder says, they wanted to see if they could up the stakes even more. “They were saying it would be nice in my physician dictation rooms if I could get in and out even quicker, so we put in biometric readers a few years ago for them. Those worked really well, they appreciated that technology,” Elder says. Biometric readers allow for physicians to use their fingerprints for authentication purposes.