Attacks on healthcare providers account for nearly 4 out of 5 data breaches, making healthcare by far the most targeted sector. Since 2015, one in every 10 patients have been affected by a data breach. In that timeframe, over 300 million medical records have been stolen More than 93% of healthcare organizations have seen a data breach; more than half have seen 5 or more breaches!
But loss of data and resulting HIPAA compliance issues are not the only concerns. I am personally aware of a small practice on the South Shore which was recently a victim of ransomware. It has been two months and they still don’t have access to their older patient data. If you are hit with a ransomware attack and you have not previously attended to proper offsite data backup, your two choices are to pay the ransom or to deal with severe impact on your practice of medicine, and the cost of slowly, manually rebuilding medical histories – if that can even be done.
Here is a link to an excellent article in Healthcare Finance: Healthcare Data Breaches.
