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View All ProductsFulfill compliance requirements with a variety of programs and courseware designed to address critical regulatory requirements as well as educate staff to recognize and mitigate risks.
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View All ProductsIn all areas of resuscitation, from neonatal to elderly care, clinical deterioration is a risk that can be avoided with the help of HealthStream's training programs.
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Learn MoreIn an earlier post about healthcare data security, HealthStream wrote about how “Greater awareness and the institution of tighter healthcare security measures has not done much to discourage the efforts of criminals to gain access to private information. Security breaches in healthcare continue to be common headaches for organizations across the map. If anything, hacking techniques have become more sophisticated and complex as a result. Healthcare security needs to take note and respond.”
A healthcare data breach is accompanied by serious costs, whether financial in terms of fines and legal judgments, as well as the cost of administering the training required by a corporate integrity agreement (CIA). This blog post looks at some of this costs, why breaches commonly occur, and what to do about them.
What Healthcare Systems Are Most Susceptible to Security Breaches?
According to Health IT Security, 500+ healthcare organizations reported breaches of more than 500 patient records to the Department of Health & Human Services during the first 10 months of 2020, a rise of 18% over the prior year. They add that “Hacking and IT incidents remained the biggest cause of healthcare data breaches, accounting for 69 percent of reported incidents—an 8 percent increase from 2019. The second leading cause was unauthorized access, which caused 20 percent of all breaches.”
While network server attacks are rising, “Email continues to be the most common attack vector leveraged in attacks on healthcare providers, despite the prevalence of ransomware.” Breaches linked to business associates are also increasing. The same article warns that vigilance is especially merited during “weekend and holidays, which are the most common attack timeframes (when fewer staff members are working).” Organizations should implement “anti-ransomware solutions and routine training for employees on malicious emails and common phishing tactics.”
Fierce Healthcare offers, “Within the healthcare industry, 50% of breaches were the result of a malicious attack, 27% of breach incidents were caused by human error, and 23% were caused by a system glitch.”
Recent Healthcare Data Security Breaches
Reporting about the top 10 healthcare data security incidents, HealthcareITNews offers that “not every security incident was caused by major ransomware attacks, of course. Some costly breaches were caused by much more mundane activities, such as improperly disposed materials or employee snooping.” In addition, “More than 10 million individuals were affected by the breaches in the top 10 list alone.”
Organization |
Individuals Affected |
Description |
Trinity Health |
3.3 million |
ransomware attack |
Inova health |
1 million |
ransomware attack |
Magellan Health |
1 million |
ransomware attack |
Dental Care Alliance |
1 million |
cyberattack |
Luxottica of America |
800,000 |
online scheduling application breach |
Northern Light Health |
650,000 |
ransomware attack |
Health Share of Oregon |
650,000 |
stolen laptop |
Florida Orthopaedic Institute |
640,000 |
ransomware attack |
Elkhart Emergency Physicians |
550,000 |
improper file disposal |
Aetna |
484,000 |
unauthorized access |
The Myriad Costs of a Healthcare Data Security Breach
According to Fierce Healthcare, “A healthcare data breach comes with a hefty price tag—to the tune of $7.13 million on average. That's up more than 10% from last year, when the average data breach cost healthcare organizations $6.45 million, according to IBM Security’s 2020 data breach cost report. Healthcare organizations continue to have the highest costs associated with data breaches, according to the report, which looked at more than 500 data breaches that occurred last year across 17 industries.”
In addition, while smart technology focused on data automation and collection can limit the costs of a breach, “healthcare companies have a low rate of adoption for these technologies. Only 23% of healthcare organizations have fully deployed security automation tools.” Enacting practical data security measures can have a big impact for healthcare.
A healthcare data security breach can also have serious non-financial impacts. These include:
Employee Productivity – healthcare professionals in IT and elsewhere may find that they are devoting more time to security and less on improving healthcare. For those in administration, notifications of those whose information is affected takes significant time and resources. Likewise, retraining everyone about improving security can involve serious employee hours spent away from providing care.
Organization Reputation – media alerts can create significant unwanted, negative attention for a healthcare organization. Repairing reputation after a breach can take significant time and effort.
Personal impacts – breaches can end careers and divert productive employee hours. Patient care cand be affected as well.
HealthStream’s compliance training solutions help healthcare organizations across the care continuum comply with government regulations and accrediting body requirements while developing and engaging staff. In addition to providing essential tools and training to help you remain compliant, we help analyze your training data and provide insight into your training initiatives—enabling you to measure compliance progress, identify outstanding challenges, and determine where to make compliance program improvements. Our innovative educational content, data solutions, and tools are recognized throughout healthcare as the industry standard for comprehensive and engaging compliance training.
HealthStream’s learning management system and comprehensive suite of competency management tools empower your healthcare workforce to deliver the best patient care.
View All Learning & PerformanceHealthStream offers performance learning management solutions to help develop your healthcare staff into leaders and reduce turnover.
View All ProductsHealthStream works with healthcare organizations to create engaging and high-quality training videos for your staff and management.
View All ProductsImprove care quality and save money by making informed decisions about your healthcare facility and staff with HealthStream's reporting analytics solution.
View All ProductsHealthStream's proven methods for the improvement and overall engagement of your healthcare staff foster a positive workplace and increase retention rates.
View All ProductsThe leadership development program from HealthStream helps mold your high-potential healthcare employees into proven leaders.
View All ProductsWhen you enact HealthStream's quality compliance solutions, you can do so with the confidence your healthcare organization will meet all standards of care.
View All Quality & ComplianceFulfill compliance requirements with a variety of programs and courseware designed to address critical regulatory requirements as well as educate staff to recognize and mitigate risks.
View All ProductsBy increasing your healthcare staff's focus on quality and safety with HealthStream, they can help to reduce medical errors and readmission rates.
View All ProductsLearn about what HealthStream's healthcare policy management software and how it can help aid your organization efforts.
View All ProductsHealthStream's education helps address diversity, equity, and inclusion within your organization, as well as promoting health equity in the communities you serve.
View All ProductsHealthStream offers professional training and education on how to best optimize your reimbursement process within your healthcare organization.
View All ReimbursementTeach your healthcare staff about the revenue cycle and claim management through targeted training and video tools from HealthStream.
View All ProductsLearn about our advanced resuscitation training solutions. Our solutions are designed to help improve patient outcomes.
View All ResuscitationIn all areas of resuscitation, from neonatal to elderly care, clinical deterioration is a risk that can be avoided with the help of HealthStream's training programs.
View All ProductsNurture the skills of your nurses and medical staff to help mold them into effective leaders with development training from HealthStream.
View All ProductsExpand the decision-making skills and effectiveness of your healthcare workforce with HealthStream's clinical development programs and services.
View All Clinical DevelopmentMake sure your clinicians have the support they need to provide competent care with clinical competency training and development from HealthStream.
View All ProductsHealthStream’s learning management system and comprehensive suite of competency management tools empower your healthcare workforce to deliver the best patient care.
View All ProductsThe suite of healthcare onboarding solutions available from HealthStream aids in nurse retention and improved patient outcomes.
View All ProductsGive your healthcare staff the decision support and skills training they need with the online products available from HealthStream.
View All ProductsHealthStream leverages medical professional development in healthcare by providing staff training programs
View All ProductsLearn more about HealthStream's provider credentialing, privileging, & enrollment solutions for healthcare organizations.
View All CredentialingExperience standardized and centralized healthcare provider credentialing, privileging, and enrollment that is smarter and faster than ever before.
View All ProductsAutomated, web-based provider credentialing and enrollment software for growing medical groups.
View All ProductsNCQA-certified CVO verification services for initial and re-credentialing files in an overflow or full-service capacity for healthcare organizations.
View All ProductsSearch, review, and add providers into the Epic provider master file with our Epic app integration, Provider Validate.
View All ProductsMake sure your healthcare staff can schedule out appointments and work schedules with ease using HealthStream's line of software solutions.
View All SchedulingHealthcare scheduling software designed to optimize staffing requirements & elevate patient care
View All ProductsPrecisely align staffing and needed resources to enable efficient patient flow and high-quality, cost-effective patient care.
View All ProductsHealthStream’s free nurse schedule app, NurseGrid™, is built to help you care for your staff and engage with their specific needs.
View All Products