Maintaining patient data integrity is more complicated than ever; cybersecurity threats loom, patients are taking more ownership of their care (self-registration, for example) and health system merger activity is on the rise. It can make the quest for the ever-elusive 1% maximum duplicate rate seem, at times, unattainable. But a secure, accurate, and duplicate-free MPI/EMPI can be achieved. It just requires a multi-pronged approach to protect data throughout its journey into a health system
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Ransomware Attacks
Defining Cyber Immunity: A Solution to Cyberattacks
In recent years, the world has become aware of the effects and nature of a far-reaching virus. Biologically, a virus is something that inserts itself into the body and can replicate itself enough to infect the host. While this is true for living things, technology can also be exposed to viruses. – codes that can replicate themselves using different methodologies with the ultimate goal to destroy data, hold it for ransom, or breach security. By some counts, there are more than 2,200
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What Healthcare Leaders Need to Do Now About Ransomware
If ransomware is not a topic of conversation around any healthcare organization’s boardroom table, directors and senior executives may be exposing the organization (and themselves) to considerable risk. Here’s a guide to ransomware trends for 2022 and steps healthcare leaders can take to help protect their organizations. Ransomware trends in 2022 The risk of a ransomware attack in 2022 is substantial, with gangs specializing in targeting the healthcare sector. Last year saw dozens of
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Healthcare Is A Cyber Criminal’s Dream, But It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way
Healthcare is a cyber criminal’s dream. It presents the intersection of a data treasure trove, weak security posture, limited resources, complicated supply chain, and patient care delivery. When faced with having to pick a priority to optimize for, healthcare will, of course, always pick delivering healthcare. This means that when tradeoffs must be made and resources are limited immediate patient care is prioritized over anything else. A great example of this is looking at how
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3-Step Ransomware Recovery Strategy for Healthcare Organizations
At some point, the chances are high that ransomware will pierce the defenses you have tried to put in place at your healthcare organization. When that occurs, your healthcare organization needs a ransomware recovery strategy, which enhances your typical backup and recovery processes. Below is a three-step program for ensuring that you can recover from an attack. Step 1 - Frequent Backups Ransomware, unlike any other disaster, can strike anywhere. No data center is safe. It can also hit at
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Why the Digital-First, Patient-Centered Care is Critical to Healthcare
In the turmoil of one of the hardest years the healthcare industry has experienced, many healthcare organizations innovated nearly overnight, transforming bedside tablets into virtual care providers and parking garages into field hospitals. Through the help of agile, flexible technology, healthcare has empowered providers to support patient care anywhere. The pandemic created a tipping point: The healthcare industry must accelerate its drive toward a digital-first mentality.
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Escalating Cyberattacks on Healthcare Organizations Highlight Need for Security Interventions
Healthcare organizations have faced continual stress from heavy COVID-19 caseloads in 2020. Cyberattacks on their information networks also loomed as a serious threat, and the pressure to protect data is expected to grow this year, as more criminals target healthcare providers. Protecting patient data from unauthorized access has long been a regulatory prerequisite for healthcare organizations. But increasingly, cybercriminals see profit potential in attacking and crippling their networks,
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IoMT Is Improving Patient Access: We Must Avoid Creating New Barriers
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is changing the face of healthcare and has the potential to significantly improve patient access as well as system efficiencies. The adoption of telemedicine, for example, spurred on by the Covid-19 pandemic, has spread rapidly. Forrester revised its forecasts to predict that virtual care visits in the United States will soar to more than one billion this year—including 900 million visits related to Covid-19 specifically. Likewise, in the United Kingdom,
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Gaps in Clinical Communication, Document Exchange Lead to Gaps in Care
Communication problems and inadequate information flow are two of the most common root causes of medical errors. The potential for miscommunication and faulty exchange of information in healthcare is substantial. Consider: patient information is dispersed among multiple providers and payers along the continuum of care. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and other clinical systems do not capture patient information or format medical documentation in a standardized manner. In an environment with
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COVID-19 Exposed The True Vulnerability of Healthcare Infrastructure
In 2019, 41 million patient records breached in 572 reported incidents at an average cost of $1.8 million per breach. These statistics are far from surprising with healthcare records selling for a reported average of $45 on the dark web. Unfortunately, the year 2020 aggravated these issues as COVID-19 exposed the true vulnerability of the healthcare infrastructure. Organizations not only had to manage the medical and financial impacts of the pandemic but also the security risks inherent in the
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