Study: Teaching hospitals at greatest risk for large e-records breaches

Newswire: April 3, 2017.
Dateline: Chicago

Teaching hospitals in the United States are particularly susceptible to large data breaches, according to a study published recently in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Researchers, examining nearly 1,800 data breaches from 2009 to the end of 2016, discovered that 33 hospitals reported more than one breach, and many of them were teaching hospitals. Two suffered four breaches, according to the study.

Of 141 acute care hospitals reporting breaches, 52 were major academic medical centers.

“Hospital size and major teaching status were positively associated with the risk of data breaches,” the researchers said.

“Despite the call for good data hygiene, little evidence exists of the effectiveness of specific practices in hospitals,” they added. “Identification of evidence-based effective data security practices should be made a research priority.”

The research examined data reported to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from Oct. 21, 2009 to Dec. 31, 2016.

The study was published five days after IBM’s Threat Intelligence Index was released, showing that the healthcare sector is also more susceptible than other fields to data breaches carried out by insiders.

Overall, more than 4 billion electronic records were compromised in 2016, IBM found, a more than 500 percent increase from the 600 million compromised in 2015.

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