Healthcare Facilities Should Implement Safeguards On Data...

Information security so important in healthcare because being able to share data digitally holds a lot of potential for doctors, nurses and clinicians to send and receive content fast and effectively. Although this is a great thing, on one hand, it is also dangerous because patient data and other sensitive information are even more at risk of being stolen, exposed or accessed by unauthorized parties. Because of this, security must be a top priority for any medical organization today and for the future. In order to ensure patient data will be secure, healthcare facilities should implement safeguards on data information. Types of Safeguards There are many types of ways to safeguard data information in a healthcare facility. These kinds†¦show more content†¦The Technical safeguard provisions consist of five broad categories Access Controls, Audit Controls: Integrity Controls, Person or Entity Authentication and Transmission Security (Sayles, 2013). All of these safeguards are purposed to protect and secure sensitive data. Case #1: Advocate Medical Group Advocate Medical Group (AMG) is a medical group that provides primary and, specialty car services as well as medical imaging, outpatient services and community-based medical practices located in Chicago. This organization is a part of Advocate Health Care, one of the largest health systems in Illinois. It was founded in 1980, and is one of Chicago s leading physician group practices. Although as prestigious as this healthcare organization may seem on July 15, 2013 over 4 million of their members were affected by a major security breach. It is reported to be 2nd largest data breach ever reported through the HHS database (Vogel, 2014). Four laptops containing more than 4 million patient records were stolen. In the Advocate case, several categories of data reported as at risk appeared to qualify as protected health data under federal law, including medical record numbers, health insurance information. Social Security numbers and other information that could be used for fraudulent p urposes were compromised. While the computers were password protected, they were not