By using PC blades, Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group can provide physicians with access to patient data in each exam room while reducing the risk of unauthorized access, Fuller says. Another plus: Using only a monitor, keyboard, and mouse in exam rooms reduces heat and noise, and eliminates the need for in-room technician maintenance.
"One of my biggest fears was if a physician is in the process of performing some procedure with a patient and in pops one of my technicians to work on a computer that's down," Fuller says.
The physicians' group, which is owned by Northwestern Memorial Hospitals, decided about 18 months ago to install blade PCs from ClearCube in each of its offices. The blade racks were placed in backroom closets. Depending on the size of the clinic, nine to 21 separate Pentium III-based PC blades were placed in each rack, powering a similar number of exam-room client stations.
Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group also added the XyLoc security solution from Ensure Technologies Inc., which requires physicians to wear a radio-frequency identification tag as part of their ID badges. When they enter an exam room, the client station recognizes them, activates, and is then accessed with a personal identification number. When the physician leaves the room, the terminal automatically locks.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which sets rules on data privacy and security, "was a concern, and we needed the ability to ensure that if a physician left the room, the patient information could not be accessed by anyone else," Fuller says.
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