Greene County Medical Center will soon have a new system in place to help safeguard against privacy breaches when it switches to the new electronic patient record system with EPIC.

The Affiliated Covered Entity (ACE) program provides additional technology support and trained staff to all Unity Point Health hospitals who typically use EPIC.  ACE helps to ensure security with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for patient confidentiality.

However, one potential concern voiced by the Board of Trustees was ACE’s use of joint and several liability if there was to be a breach in the system.  If something were to happen and a hospital is liable for a breach in EPIC, then the cost of potential repairs or a lawsuit would be shared among all other hospitals that use ACE.  Some of the comments from the Board were that if it’s not GCMC’s fault that there was a breach, then they shouldn’t have to help pay for someone else’s mistakes.

GCMC Chief Executive Officer Carl Behne believes the benefits of ACE outweigh the risks and he explains what those benefits are.

“There’s always room for improvement and when others are able to do things, test things ahead of you and learn from their mistakes, it’s always beneficial to gain that further knowledge.  And so we’re going to be able to enhance our level of compliance (with HIPAA), our policies and procedures and really ensure that we are providing the best outcome and the best service for our patients when they’re here on our campus.”

If GCMC were to implement EPIC without ACE, then if there is a breach in the system, then all the responsibility is placed on the medical center.  Behne notes that they have a good structure of policies in place, but having added personnel working on those types of situations and having a core group of people to look to for guidance can help them avoid those situations.

After discussion took place in December, the Board approved the agreement that GCMC be a part of ACE and it is anticipated to be streamlined for a start date to coincide with EPIC’s “Go-Live” date of March 29th and 30th.