Healthcare-related cyberattacks are on the rise in the U.S., with more than 51.9 million patient records being exposed in 2022 alone.
A survey of 641 healthcare information technology and security professionals by the Ponemon Institute found that 89% of respondents' organizations had experienced an attack in the last 12 months.
Just one month into 2024, several major health systems have faced cybersecurity incidents, causing operational issues and exposing patient information.
Michael Powers, administrator at Children's West Surgery Center in Knoxville, Tenn., told Becker's how his ASC is bracing for possible cybersecurity incidents in 2024.
Michael Powers: Last year our center completely updated our practice management, clinical coordination and the infrastructure to go to a full EMR. Our older systems did not allow for external accessing of the system. As applications and systems become more sophisticated it raises the alarm on the great concern of cybersecurity. In addition, the creation of redundancies and having a disaster recovery plan. Our center is not associated with a larger group so it weighs heavily on us to ensure all of the above are intentionally thought out and a plan is in place. At the beginning of this year, we have been engaged with an outside company to perform a deep dive into our systems and complete a risk assessment to assist us in finding any areas that we need to shore up. We recognized early on that we did not have the internal expertise to address the complexities of cybersecurity, disaster recovery and a comprehensive risk assessment. This is how we are trying to be prepared.