Risks to Patients Data

Risks to Patients Data

Beneficiaries of Improved Healthcare Data Security

Healthcare organizations need to understand the benefits of secure healthcare data sharing and way they could participate in securing such classified information. There is a wide range of benefits involved in this professional process in ethical healthcare practice that the entire system should implement to improve high quality healthcare. For instance, chronic disease registries, information on substance abuse, large-scale analytics, epidemiology, or disease tracking are all vital potential uses for data sharing. Data sharing is also important in the interoperation routine in the emergency department and genetic studies.  Other than clinical and patient-facing uses, ethical exchange of data in medical practices is important because it ensure sharing of best healthcare practices. The sharing of this data could be between organizations, or between entities in other industries like government agencies and financial institutions. For example, healthcare organizations can share data on cyber threats or the insider threats such as those emanating from cyber attacks.

Ethical information sharing is useful in all types of threats and incidences whether there is incident of something that occurred in the past or occurring now. Notably, both incidences and threats have real time indicators to help spot the occurrence. Stimulating ethical healthcare information sharing aids incident communication, which is important for the communications department in healthcare organizations and their entire service delivery reputation. For instance, the importance is noticeable because it can potentially prevent future cyber-security incidences from taking place. Health care organizations and other related entities should know what happened, process of its discovery, the magnitude of losses caused, damage, or harm, and proof of the incident occurrence.

Elsewhere, HIPPA says rampant cyber security concerns are the major reason healthcare providers are hesitant to share patient or generally healthcare information electronically. HIPPA allows access, usage, and disclosure of Protected Health Information and research shows that patients assume that the sharing of their classified information is automatic between their treating physicians. However, certain stakeholders in the healthcare department information sharing barriers induce a regulatory burden on the concerned organizations. The burden may make these organizations and other stake holding entities reconsider data sharing which may include total withdrawal from electronic or digital system of data sharing.

Healthcare entities like the American Healthcare Associations have reservations on the legal provisions of HIPPA. The association feels that reducing data sharing barriers in current regulations of the Act will aid healthcare automatically. Moreover, HIPPA regulations limit patient data sharing for healthcare operations like assessment of quality of services and outcome evaluation for improvement purposes.

Personal Opinion on Healthcare Data Security

Information security is important in any public service sector in a country because any form of loophole may result to perpetration of criminal activities of any fatal nature. In health care, information security is more important as it deals with human life care; therefore, there is high interest in accessing healthcare data by criminals. As mentioned in the review, healthcare organizations are becoming more vulnerable to cyber security attacks with continuous technology advancements. The breaching of several health systems in the United States in 2016 that resulted in seven-figure settlement for HIPPA violations is a clear case study of the level of vulnerability of health systems. Therefore, for improved healthcare that health department is investing a lot to achieve for the American people, there is dare need for improvement in healthcare data-security systems.

It is true that the vulnerability to healthcare systems keeps increasing and major contributors to such are the care providers and the government. Noticeable, as mentioned earlier, healthcare providers tend to put more focus on the delivery of medical care services without paying attention to the information infrastructure. This imbalance and one-sided focus is a major cause of vulnerability and the lose systems is allowing easy access to classified healthcare information leading to increased cases of breach. From the past breach incidences that caused a lot of havoc to the healthcare systems of the United States, organizations should now realize that there is need to pay equal attention to information infrastructure and operations as it does to healthcare service provision. They should advance their systems to fight proactively against cyber attacks to strengthen security of health data within the system. The fight will include advancing system’s infrastructure and quality of ethical data sharing within the organization and beyond.

As earlier mentioned, it is quite important to note that cyber attackers earn fortunes when they access organizations’ and patients’ information for example financial information.  The access is possible mostly on web when healthcare providers share data in their daily routine. Therefore, in attempts to upgrade data security systems within the healthcare organizations, there should be much care on ethical data sharing. HIPPA may have undesirable provisions for instance, allowing restricted sharing of patients’ information (PHI) as contested by the American Healthcare Association. However, the federal government had good intentions to help the healthcare system to protect vulnerable patients’ classified information. Any Act in law has both the good and the bad side of it anywhere in the whole world. Healthcare sector should not fault the government over the entire HIPPA because it has some provisions that they feel is not going down well with them, the critics should not be ill intentioned. The HIPPA is a good Act that gears at improving ethical practices in data sharing within the healthcare sector despite debatable loopholes. Involved parties like the health care associations should engage the government in discussions to amend any part of the Act that they fee is not okay instead of negative criticism.

Negative Side of Improved Healthcare Data Security

Any good thing must have the negative side of it and attempts to heighten the security of data systems in the healthcare sector are not an exemption. The implementation of HIPPA provisions and other technical measures to improve security of healthcare data may be a good initiative to block criminals from accessing health information. However, a few internal challenges come with these implementations and the healthcare sector again must have to think of a way to minimize such issues. The system gets unwieldy resulting to a cynical attitude with the care providers, which in turn causes the issues that seem to be drawbacks with the enhanced information systems security.

The system may have technical usability procedures that may mislead clinicians resulting to repeated similar documentation in more than one place. Duplication or misplacing information within the system causes monotony and disorganization within a system. The clinicians may find work tiresome and boring when complicated systems are in place for use in the name of high security digital health systems. Similarly, with complex computer system, it may take several clicks to do common functions like writing a prescription, which again makes the clinicians work tiresome and boring. Furthermore, it also makes patients tired and bored of waiting for long consultations, which is not good when a healthcare facility is dealing with an emergency case.

Besides, secure modern computer systems have fast track and detection techniques that may bring up too many pop up warnings and alerts causing “alert fatigue” to the users. Moreover, the learning process that comes with advancement of security systems in the computers is excessively long, and it is challenging for the clinicians who worked their whole career on paper-based data documentation and sharing. The system may have to either replace such clinicians with new ones or invest in training them with will be more challenging. The improved systems may also have fatigue implications on the patients as the patient experience such when they see doctors spending more time on computers than talking to them.

What it takes to Implement Improved Healthcare Data Security

As earlier mentioned, it is no secret that healthcare is quite a lucrative sector for cyber criminals across the world with significant increase in cyber attack cases, despite high level of awareness. Healthcare organizations under siege with these cyber attack cases are trying to tighten information security. Many are hiring cyber security professionals with greater experience from more mature industries, while others are working towards adopting strong frameworks. The frameworks in question are like HITRUST and ISO that evaluates and improve cyber security regulations and controls including awareness coaching for the healthcare labor force. More of the healthcare organizations are also planning to increase level of investments on cyber security systems.

For an improved cyber security system, healthcare organizations should adhere to five important steps in order to have what it takes for a high-level security system. First, the organizations should know what is on their network. There are tools available that will help them identify the current available devices on network and notify them when there is an additional device. The initiative will provide visibility to understand what is on the network, what they are sending and validation on whether they are appropriate. Secondly, they should apply regular software updates and patches in the system because implementing increased patching and new software versions are essential in preventing breaches from attackers.

Additionally, the organizations should be able to least privileged access to sensitive and critical data in the system. The basis of access should be on need to know, users who need access should only see what is necessary to them and their job duties, and there should automatic removal of access when dormant. There should also be thorough training for users to avoid and report any malice and possible attacks. The training creates security awareness within the organizations’ network because it provides workforce with means to detect and report any form of suspected attacks. Finally, the systems should be able to engage trusted partners. For instance, in outsourcing data processing duties, the organizations should deal with trusted partners with strong cyber security controls. The strong security systems will provide assurance that that the data outsourced is safe.

Conclusion

The rising cases in healthcare cyber attacks alarms most of the healthcare organizations within the United States to fight back and reduce such cases. The necessity in the war is that as attackers feel that healthcare is a lucrative field with booming returns, healthcare providers must also maintain their reputation in quality of service. The government is spending so much on healthcare across the country and therefore it is necessary for the healthcare sector to step up and ensure data is secure. The immediate beneficiaries of data security advancement are the patients and the health providers, for that reasons they should be the front players in tightening data security.