ou are the newly hired Health Informatics Director of a large physician practice that encompasses $4$ locations around the city, $15$ physicians, $8$ nurse practioners, $12$ LPNs and medical assistants, and $15$ administrative staff. The practice includes primary care providers in women$$s health, pediatricians, and adult medicine $($internists$).$ Currently the practice does have a website for informational purposes only; anyone with questions are directed to call the office directly. They do not currently have a patient portal configured, though that is a long$-$term goal. The practice does currently utilize an EHR that is connected to each office via a physical cable ring that they pay a vendor to maintain. Prior to your hiring, the physicians paid a $($high$-$priced$)$ consultant to address the following complaints related to their computer network:

There is no remote access to the EHR and physicians want to be able to work from home.

Employees get frustrated when they do not have security access to specific patient records or other areas, particularly when they have to work at different locations.

Employees also are annoyed that they are blocked from downloading weather applications or screensavers to their work stations or laptops.

Patients and their families complain that there is no free wireless internet available while they are waiting in the office.

The consultant made the following recommendations:

Stop using the fiber$-$optic cable service and convert to all wireless communication, internal and external. A WAN is the best choice since it is the most open and accessible for your practice physicians and employees.

Give all employees the same level of access to patient records and other operations to enhance efficiency and prevent employee frustration. This will increase "time on task" and decrease employee anger.

Give all employees administrator$-$level permissions to their work stations and$/$or laptops but block any websites with inappropriate language. This will allow individual employees to download desktop applications that they enjoy or find useful.

Allow physicians to take their laptops home since they are password protected anyway.

Provide free wireless internet access to your patients and visitors, since this is expected customer service in today$$s world. The front desk can provide visitors with the password so that only your patients can get access.

While you are no computer expert, as the Health Informatics Director, your main concern is allowing critical information exchange while maintaining privacy and security. For your first meeting with the physician partners, prepare an analysis of the consultant$$s proposal using the document, $$Cybersecurity: The protection of data and systems in networks that connect to the internet $10$ best practices for the small healthcare environmentLinks to an external site.$$ created by HealthIT.gov as a reference.

Action Items

Review the materials in Module $1$ Preparation.

Review Research & Writing Tips.

In a $3-5$ page Microsoft Word document in APA format, include the following:

A detailed description of any and all concerns you have for each of the five consultant recommendations.

Your new recommendations for the identified staff complaints.

Be specific in your technology recommendations to use $($WAN$,$ WLAN, LAN, VPN$,$ etc.$)$

Include discussion about web$-$based vs$.$ intranet communications

Your recommendations for at least $5$ key policy statements about network use for the practice. Elements to consider are access, password strength, encryption, mobile devices, virus attacks, etc. $($Hint: there are many examples of network use policies that can be found, ironically, on the internet. If you choose one as a reference, be sure to provide the proper citation.$)$