In the past, securing health records was just a matter of storing file folders with patient’s health records in a file cabinet within a locked room. The access was limited to the Patient Records Department and the system, although slow, worked! With today’s information at your fingertips mentality, instantaneous access to health records can be retrieved in a matter of nanoseconds. As a patient’s health records are important to access during a hospital stay (e.g., physician, nursing staff, billing, and specialized department access) records can flow quite freely. Thus, several questions arise. How vulnerable are patient records? Should Hospital Administration be more concerned about someone hacking into their system or someone instituting malware into a system?
When a hacker hacks into an organization’s system, it is compared to someone window shopping looking for the best buy (in this case specific information such as names, address, social security numbers, financial data, etc.). In the case of malware, it is like someone locking the front door to the department store and letting no one in until a payment is made for the key. Both are fears which Hospital Administrators must be concerned with in protecting and safeguarding patient data. An astute Hospital Administrator, can require his IT Department to institute firewalls in order to minimize intrusion from hackers. But, when it comes to malware that can be quite difficult.
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Malware can physically harm an individual within a hospital environment. If a patient’s medical health record is locked and inaccessible it could very well be a life and death situation. Medical staff would not be able to access specific information regarding individual patients, thus would be unable to follow proper medical protocol. Thus, when assessing whether a Hospital Administrator should be more fearful of system hacking, or the utilization of malware, the answer is the difference between accessing information, and malware becomes the most serious issue.
