Health Care Organizations Underprepared to Secure Patient Data: PwC

A new report by PwC calls on health care organizations to adopt the security technology now being developed to avoid data breaches.

Consulting firm PwC's Health Research Institute has come out with a report revealing that health organizations are underprepared to secure patient medical information.

The report, "Old Data Learns New Tricks: Managing Patient Privacy and Security on a New Data-Sharing Playground," shows that despite advances in electronic health records (EHRs) software and security technology, health care organizations have yet to adopt privacy measures on a large scale.

For the survey, PwC interviewed 600 executives from hospitals, physician practices, health insurers and pharmaceutical and life science companies.

Only 58 percent of providers and 41 percent of health insurers train employees on privacy measures for EHRs, PwC reports.

Health care companies are underprepared because they've underinvested in IT and focused on legal and regulatory compliance under HIPAA instead, according to James Koenig, director and co-leader of the health information privacy and security practice at PwC.

"Now that there are law changes [and] IT changes to stimulate electronic health records, now's the time for these organizations to address and to mature their environment," Koenig told eWEEK.

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Source: eweek.com
By: Brian T. Horowitz