StorageTek and Stockell Provide Triage to Organizations Striving To Achieve HIPAA Compliance

SAN DIEGO, HIMSS Booth No. 1919, Feb. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- As the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) privacy compliance deadline quickly approaches, health care organizations are feeling the pressure. StorageTek(R), the storage services and solutions expert, has formed an alliance with Stockell, a leading health care consulting firm, to offer a quick and comprehensive HIPAA Fast Path Gap Analysis. This offering provides a methodology to assist organizations in their efforts to validate whether they are meeting the requirements of the upcoming regulations and its deadline.

StorageTek and Stockell consultants conduct a physical and electronic assessment of an organization's ability to meet the April 14 HIPAA Privacy deadline. The Fast Path Gap Analysis validates the steps already taken by an organization and identifies areas where additional resources should be allocated to assist in the organizations efforts to achieve compliance. Consultants then make recommendations and develop an appropriate remediation plan and timeline. This comparatively low-cost, on-site analysis of a health care organization's policies and IT infrastructure offers a welcome alternative to less personal and less comprehensive Web-based assessment tools and provides a remediation plan to help organizations move towards HIPAA compliance.

Health care providers with urgent needs can also enlist StorageTek and Stockell consultants to conduct a more in-depth risk assessment and help manage the implementation of a remediation plan. In addition, consultants can integrate new procedures, technologies or processes to enhance future compliance capabilities. For example, StorageTek and Stockell offer monitoring services that periodically assess an organization's compliance, considering changes in personnel, IT infrastructure and regulations.

"This alliance offers the health care community a third-party expert who can quickly help an organization assess compliance issues and, if necessary, provide recommendations for that organization's efforts to achieve compliance," said John Galasso, StorageTek manager of Worldwide Healthcare Business Development. "More importantly, our consultants provide the health care community additional proof of the necessary due diligence for compliance and help facilitate a strategy for future compliance."

"HIPAA regulations have forced the companies in the health care industry to take a new look at their information policies and IT infrastructures," said Mick Coady, Stockell director of Infrastructure Services. "At Stockell, we specialize in helping our customers meet these challenges. A key component of HIPAA compliance is assuring that PHI (Protected Healthcare Information) be maintained in a private and secure manner. HIPAA mandates that PHI, both while active and at rest, be managed so that they are not in violation of the patient's right to privacy and that this information is available to assist in treatment and diagnosis. Through the Stockell alliance with StorageTek, we are offering the expertise, the services and the technology solutions our customers need."

About Stockell

Stockell Information Systems is the parent company for Stockell Consulting and Stockell Healthcare Systems. It embraces a belief that, by providing tools and innovative solutions that ideally match a company's information systems needs, Stockell can help sharpen any enterprise's competitive edge and take its business affordably and profitably into the future. For more information, see http://www.stockell.com/ , or call 1.800.STOCKELL.

About StorageTek

StorageTek (Storage Technology Corp.) , a $2 billion worldwide company with headquarters in Louisville, CO., delivers a broad range of storage solutions that are easy to manage, that integrate well with existing infrastructures, and that allow universal access to data across servers, media types and networks. StorageTek provides practical and safe storage solutions in disk, networking, tape and tape automation, and services. StorageTek is a voting member of the SNIA. For more information, see www.storagetek.com , or call 1.800.786.7835

TRADEMARKS: StorageTek is a registered trademark of Storage Technology Corp. All other products or company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

StorageTek; Stockell

CONTACT: Robin Raulf-Sager, Public Relations Manager, +1-303-661-5920,
robin_raulf-sager@storagetek.com, or Rob Schneider, Director of Business
Development, +1-314-565-2326, rschneider@stockell.com, both of StorageTek

Web site: http://www.stockell.com/

Web site: http://www.storagetek.com/