{"id":2832,"date":"2012-02-20T07:00:12","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T15:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=2832"},"modified":"2012-02-20T07:00:12","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T15:00:12","slug":"health-care-rampant-number-of-data-breaches-raises-concern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/health-care-rampant-number-of-data-breaches-raises-concern\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Care: Rampant Number of Data Breaches Raises Concern"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Friday, when reviewing the news headlines for the day, these three stood out:<\/p>\n

O.C. patients’ medical records compromised<\/a><\/strong> — 21,300 patients at Jude Medical Center in Fullerton and Mission Hospital facilities in Laguna Beach and Mission Viejo were inadvertantly made publicly available because of incorrect security settings.<\/p>\n

St. Joseph Health System warns of patient data breach<\/a><\/strong> — 10,000 patients in Santa Rosa, Petaluma and Napa had their personal health information records inadvertantly made publicly available<\/p>\n

NYC Hospital Data Theft Affects 1.7 Million Patients<\/strong> <\/a>— 1.7 million New York City patients, staff members and others affiliated with four Bronx hospitals were affected by a data breach that has taken two months to report<\/p>\n

It’s just another day in the world of security and health care records. \u00a0Data breaches in health care have become all too common. \u00a0Over the last year, health care data breaches have affected more than 19 million people.<\/p>\n

Daniel W. Berger<\/a>, President and CEO \u00a0of IT Security company Redspin<\/a>, said <\/a>that\u00a0“Information security data breaches in healthcare have reached epidemic proportions <\/a>\u2013 the problem is widespread and accelerating. \u00a0Incidents have been reported in nearly all 50 states and the total number of records breached increased 97% in 2011 as compared to 2010.”<\/p>\n

And now there is a \u00a0mind-boggling statistic from Ponemon Institute<\/a>. \u00a0In a recent study they found that over the last year, 91 percent of small healthcare organizations<\/em> suffered a data breach and 23 percent suffered at least one patient identity theft.<\/p>\n

Of the small healthcare organizations surveyed:<\/p>\n