Over 18,000 Henry Ford Healthy System patients had their protected health information hacked and there are many lessons to be learned for practices of all sizes.
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In early October, 18,470 Detroit-based patients had their information used for inappropriate purposes.
Henry Ford said it learned of the incident in early October, after someone stole the email credentials of a group of employees. The health system has since launched an investigation to discover how the breach occurred.
The patient information that was hacked may have included: name, date of birth, doctor’s name, date of service, department, medical condition, health insurer, and more.
Henry Ford is strengthening security protections for employees and expediting initiatives around retention and authentication.
What can you learn from this breach?
Breaches can happen to any healthcare entity, at any time.
It is essential to take precautions prior to a breach occurring. Perform your risk assessment and find areas of vulnerability.
Make sure that you prioritize your practice’s security. This includes regular training on phishing scams, remote shut downs, automatic logouts, regular password changes and more.
We help our clients perform risk assessments and put policies and procedures in place to protect their patient information.
The time to prepare for a breach is now. Healthcare information is always a large target of hackers and cyber crime.
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P.S. If you or your patients are interested in consumer healthcare issues, check out myhealthspin.com.