Zix Corporation Provides St. Agnes HealthCare of the Ascension Health Network with Organization-wide e-Messaging Protection Services
Baltimore’s oldest Catholic hospital chooses ZixCorp solutions for its flexible, easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy benefits
DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–May 28, 2003– Zix Corporation (ZixCorp(TM)), (Nasdaq: ZIXI), a global provider of e-messaging management and protection services, today announced that St. Agnes HealthCare, a Baltimore-based full-service community teaching hospital and member of the Ascension Health network, has selected ZixCorp as its organization-wide secure email protection provider. St. Agnes chose ZixCorp to ensure continuing delivery of high-quality healthcare and to meet the mandates of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) regarding email communications over public networks.
Installed in March, ZixCorp’s comprehensive suite of services provides St. Agnes with an easy-to-use, easy-to-deploy e-messaging protection solution that safeguards confidential information designated as Protected Health Information (PHI) under HIPAA. St. Agnes is the fifth largest hospital in Maryland and a leading healthcare provider, as well as a major employer, with 2,900 employees, in the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area. The hospital purchased both a ZixAuditor(TM) assessment and ZixVPM(TM) (Zix Virtual Private Messenger(TM)) service for 1,000 users. An initial analysis using ZixAuditor, a unique assessment service that examines email traffic for email security vulnerabilities, was performed to create effective policies and procedures for achieving higher levels of e-messaging protection. ZixVPM, ZixCorp’s policy-based server solution, is providing St. Agnes with a hospital-wide e-messaging gateway that enables St. Agnes’s IT staff to avoid the burden of having to create, deploy, and manage end-user encryption keys and software. ZixCorp’s flexible service, with its send-to-anyone solution, enables secure and private email communications between the hospital, its employees, patients, and business partners, even when the recipient has no encryption software of its own.
“ZixCorp is able to provide everything we need for maintaining patient privacy through secure email, along with excellent cost savings,” said Larry Lawson, director technology services at St. Agnes HealthCare. “With ZixVPM, we discovered that not only do we get the HIPAA compliance we require, but we also are able to take a huge burden off our IT staff and still remain at the leading edge of technology and good patient care — the service makes it exceptionally easy to achieve our goals for both end users and administrators. ZixVPM’s preloaded HIPAA lexicon keeps us from having to create and maintain content filtering terminology on our own. The ZixVPM service works seamlessly with our existing system, and I am able to budget it as an operational cost rather than a capital cost. We’re committed to providing cost-effective, high-quality, patient-friendly healthcare services, and ZixCorp fits that bill perfectly.”
St. Agnes was originally created in 1862 to provide nursing care for the poor. The facility moved to its present location in 1876 and was reorganized as a full-service hospital in 1906. The hospital established the first Chest Pain ED in the world that receives up to 76,000 annual admissions. It also ranks the second highest emergency room visits in the state with over 76,300 admissions.
“As part of Ascension Health, America’s largest Catholic health system, St. Agnes is a highly respected health organization,” said Daniel S. Nutkis, vice president of strategy and products for ZixCorp. “ZixCorp services provide the interoperability, range of flexible choices, and ease of use that members of large health organizations like St. Agnes need to provide overall security to all their e-messaging partners. We’re honored that a hospital with a national reputation of excellence has selected ZixCorp services and will be recommending our solution to its sister organizations and partners as the e-messaging protection provider of choice.”
About St. Agnes HealthCare
St Agnes hospital is a major provider of healthcare and a major employer in the Metropolitan Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Northern Anne Arundel County, and Eastern Howard County. As a Catholic healthcare ministry and member of Ascension Health, St. Agnes is dedicated to the art of healing to sustain and improve the lives of the individuals and communities it serves. For more information visit www.stagnes.org.
About Zix Corporation
Zix Corporation (ZixCorp(TM)) is a global provider of e-messaging management and protection services. ZixCorp offers a portfolio of managed on-site and hosted e-messaging solutions to protect organizations from viruses, spam, and electronic attack, while delivering the ability to enforce corporate policies and securely send to anyone. ZixCorp’s advisory services and secure e-messaging solutions enable organizations of any size to streamline operations, avoid obsolescence, mitigate risks, and leverage the cost and time efficiencies of e-messaging. For more information, visit www.zixcorp.com.