Healthcare organizations across the globe continue to adopt population health management solutions and strategies to accelerate patient care and improve quality of life. These initiatives are largely supported by harnessing massive volumes of critical patient data that need to be accessed, exchanged and streamlined across various platforms. Interoperability and data sharing platforms enable hospitals to facilitate secure data exchange that drives actionable insights and supports their healthcare programs at scale.

Interoperability platforms allow hospitals to process large volumes of critical healthcare data, but how do organizations ensure that these data exchanges happen in a highly secure way?

Consider the fact that between 2009 and 2019 alone, over 3000 data breaches occurred―impacting over 230 million data records. This has affected at least 70 percent of the U.S population and this number is only increasing.

Why are healthcare data exposed to such security threats?

Healthcare cybersecurity consultants report that medical data can enable hackers to unlock confidential financial information maliciously. For instance, imagine a phone call like this…

“ This is Michael calling from your primary care center regarding your last visit to the hospital. There is a small billing-related concern. Would you like to take care of it now? Great, just so I can confirm that I am talking to the right person, could you help me with your date of birth and social security number? (SSN) Excellent! You are all set for your next appointment with Dr. John on Tuesday – see you then! ”

Or even worse, the data already has sensitive information like the SSN bank details and others. The Wall Street Journal research reveals that about 1500 such breaches occurred within a span of ten years, between 2009 and 2019―negatively impacting 160 million Americans.

Building a Robust Healthcare Data Security Program

Healthcare organizations that capture highly confidential patient health and financial information are more likely to be exposed to such malicious threats. Healthcare cybersecurity experts need to go beyond the traditional ways of security management to proactively build an organizational culture that prioritizes maintaining the highest data security standards.

This means that the entire organization from the C-suite executives to the newest recruits, stays in the know of the organizational cybersecurity guidelines and programs, updates themselves on the possible ramifications, and prepares to secure and protect the internal data. Also, ensure that your organization’s internal security team is reachable by the employees―to immediately notify and address any security-related concerns both large and small. Adopting an organization security program is even more significant for hospitals that manage massive volumes of data for large populations. It is critical that population health experts devise well-orchestrated strategies to maintain the highest levels of data security

Also Read: Population Health Management: Shifting Towards Value-based Healthcare

To learn more about how you can strengthen security measures in your healthcare organization, talk to our team.