iTM Healthcare's Leadership Allows Pacific Medical Centers to Become the First Civilian Healthcare Company to Achieve DoD DITSCAP Security Accreditation

iTM Healthcare, a leading provider of HIPAA Security planning and consulting has achieved the coveted DITSCAP accreditation for Pacific Medical Centers. The DITSCAP requirements are rightfully referred to as "HIPAA Security on Steroids."

(PRWEB) March 4, 2005 -- Pacific Medical Centers (PMC) is one of a handful of healthcare companies around the United States providing healthcare coverage through the U.S. Family Health Plan sponsored by the Department of Defense (DoD) for retired military and their dependents. In response to the increased awareness of terrorism in the United States and the theft of more than 500,000 personal health records from TriWest in 2003, the DoD is requiring all USFHP payers to pass an extensive physical, administrative, and information systems audit in order to retain their authority to operate (ATO). This required that no later than November 10, 2004, PMC meet and exceed by a huge margin the HIPAA Security rules effective on April 21, 2005!

Due to the impending DoD imposed deadline, iTM Managing Director Wayne Mackert assembled a team of Sr. Network Specialists, Windows 2000 Server Specialists, PC/LAN Technicians, Active Directory and Exchange Server Administrators, Documentation Specialists, and HIPAA Security Project Managers to accomplish a total upgrade and migration to compliant technology of more than 1000 computer and networking devices. This would normally take 9-12 months of planning and execution; however PMC only had 12 weeks to achieve the DoD certification or lose their authority to operate—a major blow to the company.

In addition, the everyday business of PMC treating patients and adjudicating claims without impact was essential. As the project progressed, the iTM team worked around the clock to completely overhaul and remediate the vulnerabilities in the clinical facilities, administrative policies and procedures, as well as eliminate 58,000 information technology vulnerabilities identified in the initial DoD security assessment. At the end of the twelve week period the validation assessment by the iTM and DoD security teams identified only 10 remaining vulnerabilities—all low risk and fully mitigated and approved by the Department of Defense. The added bonus for PMC is that they achieved the government mandated HIPAA Security compliance more than 7 months early as the DITSCAP security requirements based upon the National Security Agency security guidelines were far more stringent than the HIPAA rules.

About Pacific Medical Centers: Pacific Medical Centers offers an integrated, comprehensive network of more than 140 primary and specialty care healthcare providers at six locations throughout Puget Sound in association with the Virginia Mason Hospital. Pacific Medical Centers is also a US Family Health Plan payer for the Dept. of Defense providing healthcare coverage for thousands of DoD retirees and their dependents throughout the northwest. More information about Pacific Medical Centers is available at http://www.pacmed.org.

About iTM Healthcare: iTM Healthcare, a dedicated healthcare management consulting practice within iTech Management, LLC, provides C-level executive management consulting to payer and provider information technology organizations. iTM Healthcare is a results oriented, been-there/done-that consulting group which hires only healthcare IT executives with a minimum of 10 years management consulting AND 10 years of healthcare corporate Director /VP /CIO/ CTO experience. iTM Healthcare and iTech Management, LLC deliver results to their clients, not documents. As a member of the Mentorship Group, iTech Management, LLC maintains Strategic Alliances with local and nationally based technology, security and management consulting firms such as TripleNet Technologies, Inc., The Watson Group, Borgard Consulting, and Qualys, a leading security vulnerability appliance vendor. iTM Healthcare is a QualysGuard Security Consultant vendor.

For more information please contact Wayne Mackert at (425) 891-2128. More information is available at http://www.itechmanagement.com.

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