Daughters of Charity Health System Select ZixCorp to Protect Sensitive Data

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The Daughters of Charity Health System (DCHS) is a regional healthcare system of five hospitals spanning the California coast from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. Daughters of Charity, sponsored by St. Vincent DePaul, provide acute, long-term, community health, psychiatric, rehabilitation and residential care.

The Challenge

DCHS’ commitment to its patients extends beyond medical treatment. DCHS also have a responsibility to take steps to ensure all personal information exchanged via email is safeguarded. “The security of protected health information (PHI) is very important,” says Michael Day, DCHS’ director of information technology. “Not only from a regulatory standpoint enforced by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but also because our patients and staff need to have that confidence in us.”

Not satisfied with the email encryption solution they were using, DCHS switched to ZixCorp’s Email Encryption Service. “With our old solution, we were concerned we were at risk of not properly protecting our patients’ sensitive data or other important business information,” notes Day. “It was also a massive challenge to administer the whole process from installation through to mailbox management, information tracking and overall maintenance. We needed a more efficient and thorough process.”

The Solution

DCHS uses the ZixCorp email encryption service to communicate with anybody outside its own internal mail system. “Not only did we want to protect PHI, we also needed to encrypt sensitive information like payroll and employee data that we shared with other business partners such as our benefit administrators, lawyers and insurance companies,” says Day. “We were thrilled to find out that many of them were already in the ZixDirectory. That meant we didn’t have to chase them down to create a trusted email relationship. It was already established for us.”

ZixCorp’s Email Encryption Service lets organizations like DCHS instantly plug into the largest email encryption directory in the world. ZixDirectory boasts more than 11 million protected email addresses and is growing at more than 70,000 new members each week. Once connected, users send and receive secure emails transparently, without having to manage encryption keys. ZixCorp provides automated key management for its customers in a wide variety of industries including healthcare, government and financial services. 

The Results

Day liked what ZixCorp had to offer because of its ease of use and excellent reputation as the leading email encryption solution for health care organizations. “It was simple to set up, fast to deploy, and transparent to use,” he said. “It has a better hit rate of encrypting messages than our previous solution. ZixCorp’s service detects PHI and other sensitive information and ensures they’re secured before delivery.”

Cost was also a factor in choosing ZixCorp. “It’s a reasonably priced solution, certainly compared to other products out there,” notes Day. “ZixCorp offered a competitive pricing structure that meant no capital investment on my part but rather an operational cost that’s very manageable.”

The fact that ZixCorp’s solution is a service was also appealing. “We have a small information technology (IT) department and any time we can reduce their burden, we’re delighted. We’ve entrusted our email encryption management to ZixCorp, knowing they’ll maintain the appropriate controls and highest security. This gives us peace of mind and lets us focus on our goal—accessible and excellent health care.”

About Daughters of Charity Health System (DCHS)

For more than 150 years, the Daughters of Charity have been unwavering in their mission to treat the sick and the poor in California with compassion, respect and sensitivity. That mission lives on in the Daughters of Charity Health System (DCHS), formed in 2002. With its network of five hospitals and medical centers along the coast of California, DCHS provides its patients with top-notch health care.