Data Breaches in Healthcare: Costly for Providers and Dangerous for Patients

Ana AndradeApplication ModernizationLeave a Comment

Healthcare security

Though credit card breaches and data breaches in retail stores are more likely to make the news, the most common breaches actually happen in the healthcare industry… and that is far scarier than someone receiving your credit card information. Why? Because when a bank or credit card is breached, the data quickly becomes useless once the breach is discovered and passwords are changed. With a healthcare security breach, the information stolen can last a lifetime. That information includes personal addresses, patient medical histories and social security numbers. June of 2016 was one of the worst months yet in data breaches for healthcare, with almost 11 million patient records put at risk.

Since 2009, almost half the population has had their healthcare data stolen as a result of one of approximately 1,500 breaches. Accenture forecast 1 in 13 of us being further compromised over the coming years.

These breaches have increased in the past seven years partly because of the rules outlined in the Affordable Care Act. Part of this Act was the requirement of healthcare providers to adopt electronic healthcare records (EHR), regardless of if these providers were financially prepared to invest in security. Though it may be expensive to adopt EHR, it is estimated the healthcare industry has spent more than $6 billion on data breaches.

Without proper funds, healthcare providers may rely on outdated software systems to store patient records, which are far more susceptible to breaches than modern systems. The longer a provider stores patient records and the greater the volume of records that are stored in a system, the more susceptible those records are to a breach. That is why it is so crucial to modernize legacy systems and protect patients from a potential security breach.

Morphis offers the most complete solutions for modernizing legacy applications including transferring data from legacy systems to the cloud. From retail to bank to healthcare security, when such valuable information is at stake, the daunting prospect of updating systems begins to shrink. Morphis’ systems have a 20 year technology legacy, and our trusted methods save our clients both time and money. Contact us today and start the process of protecting your customer data.

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