In 2021, the healthcare industry faced rising supply costs, higher salaries, and critical staffing shortages exacerbated by COVID-19 on top of the continued challenge of employee retention and satisfaction, patient safety, and organizational success. Although bad actors have relentlessly exploited healthcare's weak spots for years, continuous disruption made the industry an even bigger target in 2021 as breaches were up nearly 20% compared to 2020. Greater reliance on virtual care delivery and remote work exacerbated the vulnerabilities of sensitive patient data while hackers deployed more sophisticated tactics.
These are some of the key findings contained in the 2022 Protenus Breach Barometer®, a retrospective report of health data breaches that occurred in 2021. The number of reported health data breaches has risen every year since Protenus began publishing the Breach Barometer in 2016.
Download the 2022 Breach Barometer® for the latest insights on how data breaches are impacting the healthcare industry.
The latest Breach Barometer is based on 905 health data breaches reported to HHS, the media, or some other source in 2021, which represented a 19% increase from the 758 breaches reported in 2020. Data on patient impact was available for 700 of the incidents in 2021, which compromised more than 50.4 million records.
These numbers only reflect incidents that have been detected and reported, and HHS only requires reporting of breaches that affect more than 500 patients. Therefore, the full picture is likely much more serious...
Read the full blog, here.
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Drug Diversion Monitoring, Diversion Prevention
