Case Study: Southwest Washington Medical Center (SWMC) achieves automated patient privacy monitoring and rapid HIPAA compliance with FairWarning

Compliance Action Plan: Patient Privacy Monitoring

Southwest Washington Medical Center (SWMC) is a not‑for‑profit regional hospital in Vancouver, WA, serving over 200,000 patients a year with 442 beds and a 55‑person IT staff. Facing increasing media attention and an expanding set of federal and state privacy and security regulations (HIPAA, ARRA HITECH, CMS and state requirements), SWMC found manual audits and reactive investigations insufficient to protect electronic health records and meet compliance goals within constrained resources.

SWMC implemented FairWarning’s privacy breach detection to automate continuous auditing and alerting across core clinical applications, integrating alerts with ArcSight SIEM for end‑to‑end traceability. As a result, required audits and reports are generated automatically, investigations that once took days or weeks now take minutes, and leadership reports measurable ROI in governance, risk and compliance—strengthening the hospital’s overall privacy and security posture while enabling ongoing analytics and program expansion.

Southwest Washington Medical Center (SWMC)

Christopher Paidhrin

IT Security, HIPAA Compliance Officer