Benzinga | Dec 7, 2021 01:01PM EST

CynergisTek Announces Contract Renewal For Patient Privacy Monitoring Services With Expansion To 5 Years

CynergisTek (NYSE:CTEK), a leading cybersecurity, privacy, compliance, and IT audit firm helping organizations in highly regulated industries navigate emerging security and privacy issues, announces a six-figure 5-year renewal contract with a nationally recognized academic medical center to provide user access monitoring in ePHI and EHR records.

"This renewal reflects our renewed focus on larger long term managed services contracts and the market's continued priority on partnerships and consolidation of services under key strategic vendors. The confidence this client has shown in our team is evidence of the value this service provides," said Mac McMillan, President and CEO of CynergisTek. "This program was designed to not only provide customers with the support they need to do this job right, but to also create cost savings in personnel and time. Our healthcare clients have shared with us that this support has allowed them to reduce or repurpose resources to other high priority tasks ultimately saving them valuable resources. Creating positive ROI is a hallmark of CynergisTek's approach to its managed services."

CynergisTek's Patient Privacy Monitoring Services help organizations comply with HIPAA and state patient privacy laws by increasing the visibility into potential policy violations of unauthorized access to patient records. In 2020, CynergisTek's privacy analysts analyzed millions of lines of data and hundreds of thousands of user/patient access and escalated less than five percent of accesses reviewed saving the medical center a significant amount of time and resources chasing false positives. By partnering with CynergisTek, healthcare organizations can rely on its deep expertise in privacy monitoring while they focus on other vital privacy initiatives.

The highest rates of applied sanctions in 2020 involved same household, user self-access, and same last name case types. A user access monitoring program with a clearly defined privacy policy helps protect patient privacy, educate users on the importance of patient privacy, and reduce the number of incidents that could result in sanctions. "We are very excited to continue our partnership. Our team has spent thousands of hours reviewing and analyzing alerts, performed analysis, and provided actionable reports for our client saving them both time and resources, but more importantly building organizational confidence in their program. We are honored that our client has chosen us again and will lean on our expertise for the next five years to lift a heavy burden that would otherwise have taken their team away from strategic and urgent privacy and security issues," says Andrew Mahler, Director of Privacy and Compliance Services at CynergisTek. "Working with the CynergisTek team, that combines years of user monitoring application and privacy experience helps organizations focus on patient care delivery while preventing unauthorized access that could result in a privacy breach costing millions and a significant impact to their brand reputation in the community."