Study: Patient Data Security Not A Main Concern For Most Healthcare Providers

[Christine Fulgham <christine () opensecurityfoundation org>]

http://www.darkreading.com/database_security/security/government/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228200514&queryText=healthcare

The healthcare industry is now suffering breaches to the tune of $6 billion
per year, yet 70 percent of healthcare organizations say securing patient
data isn't a priority.

If you're not feeling ill yet, consider this: Most healthcare organizations
say they have little or no confidence in their capacity to lock down patient
data, 71 percent say they don't have enough resources, and 69 percent say
they don't have the proper policies and processes to detect data breaches.

Meanwhile, the average cost to a healthcare organization is $2 million over
a two-year period, with each suffering around 2.4 incidents in the past two
years. Most breaches are caused by employee mistakes, lost or stolen
computing gear, and third-party provider errors, the report found.

"Long-term, the provider-patient relationship in healthcare is based on a
bond of trust. Unfortunately, many of the breaches affecting healthcare
organizations suggest that the industry has taken patient trust for granted
and allowed lax security practices to compromise the integrity of protected
health information," says Larry Ponemon, CEO of the Ponemon Institute.

And all of this amid the implementation of the federal mandate to move to
electronic patient records. "This realization could not come at a worse time
for the industry," Ponemon says. "Playing catch-up with information security
during an economic downturn, while also addressing a federal mandate to
migrate to electronic health records, will be financially burdensome for too
many hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare services providers."

Rick Kam, president of ID Experts, which commissioned the Benchmark Study on
Patient Privacy and Data Security, says healthcare is facing a monumental
crisis. "We want a call to action. This is a pending crisis similar to that
of the BP oil spill: One major provider or healthcare exchange is going to
be breached here shortly," Kam says. "And healthcare doesn't prioritize
protecting this data."

He says he's not as worried about the large healthcare providers as he is
about the healthcare exchanges, and small to midsize practitioners, which
are still in the early stages of moving to electronic health records. Large
providers are about 50 to 60 percent of the way there, he says.

"Healthcare exchanges will be popping up and records maintenance and setup
is costly, and these organizations are so small that they don't have the
[security] skill sets," Kam says.

Around 40 percent of healthcare organizations learned of a data breach after
a patient complaint, the report says. And 63 percent of healthcare
organizations took one to six months to resolve a breach. Overall, 56
percent have either fully deployed or are in the process of deploying an EHR
system, and 74 percent of those have an EHR say it better secures patient
data.

The most vulnerable data to loss or theft are patient billing (35 percent)
and medical records (26 percent).

Meanwhile, the HITECH Act, which requires healthcare organizations to inform
patients when their data is compromised due to a breach, appears to have
shed light on the lack of data protection in many healthcare organizations,
according to the report. "Because of HITECH, the healthcare industry has
been forced to address information security in very public manner in much
the same way financial services and other consumer-facing organizations did
after California SB 1386 in the wake of the ChoicePoint breach," Ponemon
says.

More than 70 percent of the study's respondents say HITECH regulations have
not "significantly" altered patient record security.

"They are not making the investments in security--it's just not a priority"
over revenue, ID Experts' Kam says.

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