Ingram Micro Unveils Healthcare Program To Help Partners Meet HIPAA, HITECH

Physician Outreach, available now, is designed to enable channel partners to market, sell and support health IT solutions to improve healthcare and reduce costs. Aligned with the healthcare industry, the customizable and structured offers solutions for admissions, patient release, nursing support, patient care and surgery, said Mike Humke, vice president of Ingram Micro's vertical markets.

"There are multiple practices with multiple needs and a hospital is a huge ecosystem, and the goal is to walk in and show physicians how to improve their process and provide better patient care," said Humke. "This is an opportunity to support those in the health market, and our goal is to not only work with our customers but to align them with vendors that are moving into the healthcare market."

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According to Humke, Physician Outreach will bring an infrastructure component of IT support, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) assessments, cloud services, security review and mobility support. The program also offers document management, telehealth, financial services and electronic health records (EHR).

"When creating Physician Outreach, we had a lot of conversations with small tier hospitals, physicians and partners," said Humke. "Our focus was in giving [partners] cost effective solutions, and providing partners/vendors [contacts] for mobility, understanding security within mobility, outsourcing, putting solutions together, cloud services and bringing all the pieces together."

With the emphasis on HIPAA regulations and government-mandated Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH), Guy Baroan, president of New Jersey-based managed service provider Baroan Technologies, a 12-year Ingram Micro partner, believes Physician Outreach is of great value. To improve healthcare, HITECH involves the promotion and spread of EHRs to share among other practices for client needs.

"Anytime Ingram Micro has resources toward a specific industry, they are putting great experts together, and it will make it easier for [partners] to deal with medical practices in meeting HITECH requirements and HIPAA regulations," said Baroan. "It gives [partners] more leverage, more capabilities, to offer our clients the expertise and recommended solutions from industry experts."

Ingram Micro contributes its success to the channel, Humke said, and the Physician Outreach Total Solution will bring new tools and directions to ultimately help partners enable their customers and create consulting relationships, he said.

"As mobile device management, telemedicine and cloud expands, it becomes a part of the umbrella of what we're calling our solution," said Humke. "We are going to continue to invest, add, train, and it gives us an opportunity to go deep and wide in providing support for partners/vendors and this is the first of many directions."

PUBLISHED AUGUST 1, 2013