Healthcare Single Sign On Solutions and Why They’re Necessary

Repeated logins are the bane of many care providers' existence. They're mind-numbing and they take away valuable time that could be spent caring for patients. Learn how single sign on solutions can address that issue.

It’s no secret that stress is at an all-time high for both doctors and nurses- and while efforts are being made to fix physician burnout, until those innovations are finalized, we need to tackle the problem one facet at a time. So where does one start?

According to the BBC, the government in England seems to have a pretty good idea.The country is seeing a push towards using single sign on (SSO) solutions to address the issue of repeated logins sucking away time that could be used to treat patients. Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool is already seeing upwards of 130 hours of staff time saved a day by cutting unnecessary logins and password resets through SSO.

What is Single Sign On?

SSO is a form of identity management that authenticates users with multiple applications with a single login. With an SSO, a database is used to reference login credentials and then authenticates a user across multiple apps. A user will attempt to log into a site, they will be redirected to an SSO page to enter their credentials, the SSO solution then verifies the user’s identity and passes the authentication data to the website they attempted to log into and grants access.

From there, if the user tries to access a different website that has been integrated into the SSO solution, the new site will see they’ve already been authenticated and will grant access without requiring an additional login.

The Benefits

Time Savings

On average, a clinician can have anywhere between 8-20 different passwords for the various different apps they log into daily. Many times, these accounts require multiple logins a day as well.

According to a study conducted by Perspectives, CHRISTUS Health was able to save clinicians over 49,000 hours a year by eliminating the need for multiple logins with an SSO solution. That’s equivalent to 4,088 12-hour shifts previously being spent entering credentials instead of caring for patients.

Diminish EHR Burnout

One of the reasons why 40% of all physicians claim EHRs do more harm than good is the sheer redundancy of having to log in again and again throughout their day, a task that eats up time that could be spent caring for patients.

An SSO solution may not address the larger issues of EHR interoperability, but it can surely help diminish EHR-related burnout by cutting down logins from several to singular.

Financial Savings

Time saved is money saved. If we were to take the number of hours saved from the Perspective study we mentioned above and multiply that by even the most conservative hourly wage for a medical professional, the amount of money saved would be substantial to say the very least.

Implementing Single Sign On Solutions

The first step to getting started with SSO is pretty self-explanatory: reach out to an SSO platform provider like Imprivata. Once you find a provider that supports all of your most used platforms and websites, you can start to shave away even more time by finding a medical grade tablet or computer that already has Imprivata certified components integrated into the design.

RFID

Radio Frequency Identification allows your clinicians to log into their programs without a single keystroke or click of the mouse. Simply swiping an RFID badge over a reader logs users in their app or site, after which, the SSO platform will do its magic and log the user into the rest of the programs they plan on using for the entire shift.

Common Access Card Reader (CAC) Reader

For those residing in states that require multi-factor authentication, Common Access Card readers are a great choice. A medical panel pc or medical tablet equipped with a CAC reader can grant a user access once they physically insert their card into the device.

Fighting Burnout One Click at a Time

Physician burnout is too large a problem to be solved by one convenient fix. However, changes can be made today that can at least whittle away at burnout while we wait for other changes necessary for a lasting cure.

For more information on how you can employ Imprivata SSO certified hardware, contact an expert from Cybernet today.