A healthy patient-provider relationship is the foundation for delivering quality healthcare, yet increasingly occurring cyberattacks have negatively impacted patient health outcomes, data security, and care operations. With the recent cybersecurity breaches causing disruptions to operations and workflows that require a shift to manual and paper-based processes, providers must take all necessary technical steps to protect their patients, staff, and practice reputation from potential cyberattacks.
Beyond reputational damages, cyber outages and even general IT disruptions deeply impact provider operations, especially affecting employees. Without core systems, software, and data available, provider staff takes on tedious manual tasks, including managing schedules, payment reconciliation, and reviewing extensive patient data, which overburdens them and further compounds negative impacts on operational efficiency due to decreased process efficiency and productivity.
This article will explore common cyberattack outage sources, how staff can prevent and mitigate the risks of these sources, how provider organizations can implement compliance protocols, and ultimately, how to take proactive steps to protect the integrity of systems, ensure patient data safety, and improve current processes to ensure a continually thriving practice.
Common Origins of Cyber Breaches
As recently reiterated by the Senate Finance Committee, most cyberattacks, including on major organizations, result from systemic lapses in compliance and cybersecurity protocols. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the American Hospital Association, stolen credentials are one of the most common intrusion methods used by hackers, with login information often being acquired through minimal means.
For example, hackers often use email phishing to steal login credentials and other employee information by posing as a well-known source, such as a credit card company, internet provider, or even a fellow colleague, and asking for sensitive information. Additionally, connecting to unsecured public Wi-Fi can expose employees to credential theft, eavesdropping, malware distribution, and session hijacking. Hackers sometimes only need a staff member’s email, as many software platforms don’t require strong passwords, making many easily guessable.
The reality is that these attacks can happen to any healthcare industry organization. There’s no such thing as completely eliminating risk, but providers can and must take proactive steps to best protect all stakeholders from nefarious external actors. Solutions such as double encryption and multifactor authentication, putting backup processes in place, and regularly conducting audits and inspections drastically reduce risk, and hackers will often target organizations without these precautions in place.
The following cybersecurity and compliance protocols outline actionable steps providers can take to safeguard sensitive patient data.
Protocol and Compliance Tips
The pandemic drastically reduced the number of audits and internal assessments conducted on healthcare practices’ cybersecurity policies, contributing to an industry-wide vulnerability to disruptions. Audits and assessments have been steadily increasing in recent years, but it’s important they’re not only detailed and introspective but must be personalized to the organization, concisely communicated, data-driven, and, most importantly, actionable.
Adhering to both governmental and reputable independent third-party regulators is another important protection policy and one that can suffer due to adherence often feeling tedious, stressful, and costly. While healthcare professionals are taught early on about the importance of OSHA, HIPAA, and their crucial role in safeguarding patients and their personal health data, staying up to date on compliance can be difficult due to the industry’s constant state of flux. Additionally, possible feelings of tedium and stress are compounded as further protection guidelines such as PCI (payment card industry) compliance and HITRUST certification become standard for the largest healthcare organizations.
That said, as modern software offerings become more advanced, compliance with these necessary guidelines is streamlined and achievable for providers of all sizes. Comprehensive platform management software (PMS) platforms can integrate with patient engagement software, payment and financing platforms, and compliance solutions to help simplify and automate compliance through risk assessments that offer personalized, data-driven, and actionable recommendations, wherever an org is in their compliance journey.
Compliance gaps can be costly, to say the least, but providers who prioritize keeping their patients, staff, and data safe will see their practice improve patient trust and relationships, safeguard its reputation, and spend less time performing tedious administrative tasks and more time providing quality care to their patients.
Proactive Cybersecurity Provides the Foundation for a Thriving Practice
Conducting regular internal assessments, providing comprehensive staff training on cyber breach prevention, and utilizing best-in-class PMS software to easily adhere to industry-leading protection guidelines allow providers to best mitigate the risk of external disruptions such as the recent major cyberattack incidents.
These outages spotlight the healthcare sector’s pressing need to address industry-wide vulnerabilities not just in cybersecurity compliance but in backlogged, overburdened administrative systems and an over-dependence on a singular revenue source. Prioritizing cash flow improvement through means such as improving patient out-of-pocket payments allows practices to be less reliant on insurers for their revenue and strengthens their hand in reimbursement rate negotiations. As a result, providers are more resilient to external disruptions and can invest more in their practice by hiring better talent, improving legacy software systems, and ensuring the latest compliance adherence to essential cybersecurity protocols.
About Carrie Gluck
Carrie Gluck is the CISO at Rectangle Health and is an industry expert on various Information Security regulatory requirements, industry standards, and best practices. With more than 20 years of experience in Information Technology and Information Security, Carrie offers significant expertise in planning, developing, documenting, maintaining, and optimizing security and risk management processes. She also shares her diverse experience in a wide array of security technologies for authentication, encryption, monitoring, and management of systems.