A Holistic Strategy To Preventing Internal Breaches

Privacy breaches have been escalating in the healthcare industry at an alarming rate. last year alone, more than seven million patient health records were breached. industry experts estimate the annual cost of those breaches to be over $5.6 billion. (1)

In order to protect patient privacy, hospitals have been focusing their efforts on external intrusion detection and hard drive encryption. But in doing so, they have been overlooking a far more insidious and growing problem: internal breaches by their own staff and extended care partners.

With the healthcare landscape shifting to integrated care and population health, hospitals are particularly vulnerable to internal breaches. In addition to a fluid workforce of new clinicians, interns and residents flowing in and out of the organization and roving from one workstation to another throughout the day, hospitals now need to share data outside their four walls in alliance with other providers and physician groups coordinating care as patients transition from hospital to clinic to home. The problem is compounded further by the accelerated consolidation of hospital entities through mergers and acquisitions. This confluence of factors is causing an exponential rise in the risk of unauthorized access and inappropriate use of confidential patient data.

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