Patients entrust medical practices with their most sensitive health information; while that information is important to vital areas like patient care and the revenue stream, documenting so much valuable personal data also makes medical practices a prime target for cybercriminals.
Healthcare organizations have a responsibility to protect patient info, and in the face of ever-evolving cyber threats, thorough and proactive cybersecurity measures must be a top priority of any medical practice.
What Are Some of the More Dangerous Cyber Threats That Healthcare Organizations Can Face?
- Phishing: Hackers trick healthcare professionals or their employees into handing over passwords and other sensitive info. This usually happens when a link is sent to staff in an email, which, once opened, enables unauthorized access to a practice’s computer network.
- Malware: Malicious software that can infiltrate and damage computer systems. Malware can include viruses, spyware, and trojans.
- Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks: A hacker intercepts communications between two parties and changes important information.
- Viruses and worms: Viruses attach themselves to clean files and infect other clean files. Worms self-replicate without human intervention.
What can the above threats create?
- Data Breaches: High volumes of sensitive patient data make healthcare practices a prime target for hackers. Data breaches violate HIPAA laws, erode patient trust and most importantly can open the patients up to various levels of identity theft.
- Ransomware: These attacks hold sensitive information hostage, with hackers often demanding money for the files to be returned. This type of attack can have especially disastrous consequences, directly affecting revenue and include expending huge amounts on legal and IT resources to solve.
How Cyber Threats Affect Medical Practices and the Revenue Cycle
The two biggest dangers that cyber threats pose to healthcare revenue cycle management are compromised patient privacy and compromised computer systems.
Patients entrust their personal medical information to a healthcare organization, and they rightfully expect that information to be protected. When data breaches and other attacks successfully steal patient information, current and potential patients see this and may become reluctant to utilize that practice, directly affecting its revenue and reputation.
When an organization fails to keep its patient records private, it violates HIPAA privacy and security rules, resulting in potential substantial legal punishment and fines. If a medical practice doesn’t take its cybersecurity seriously, related data breaches could mean sizable fines and even jail time for certain individuals, depending on how HIPAA laws were broken.
When a practice’s files and computer systems are compromised, patient care is also affected. During a ransomware attack, where sensitive files and information are held hostage by a hacker, that information is inaccessible until the hacker returns it. This means medical practitioners won’t have access to vital information they may need to properly care for certain patients. Ransomware attacks also allow hackers the opportunity to change or delete parts of the sensitive info, making it potentially unreliable if a reliable backup of that data isn’t available.
If important aspects of a healthcare organization’s computer systems are offline, physical pen-and-paper methods of data entry are required. This doesn’t just take more time and sacrifice efficiency; it often requires the hiring of more staff or outside services, which can be costly.
Any cyber attack can pose a direct negative impact on a practice’s revenue stream and hurt its ability to conduct RCM effectively.
How Can a Practice Reduce The Dangers of Cybersecurity Threats?
The best way to reduce the threat of cyber attacks is to practice robust cybersecurity measures. While no cyber attack is completely preventable, the right precautions and a knowledgeable staff can make a huge difference. Here are steps every healthcare organization should take to limit the dangers of cyber threats:
- Create and Maintain Cybersecurity Policies: Clearly defined plans for incident response, document retention, and disaster recovery help an organization quickly bounce back from a cyber attack. Make sure your team is ready to implement these policies.
- Encrypt Sensitive Data: If data is lost or held as part of a ransomware attack, using encryption software like DATTO can protect the contents of the data from being exposed. All backups of server data should also be encrypted for better protection.
- Use Multi-Factor Authentication: Multi-factor authentication makes staff logins more secure. With MFA, just knowing the username and password isn’t enough to access sensitive systems like email.
- Contract a Third-Party CISO: Contracting a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) can help organizations oversee their security training, strategic planning, review patch compliance reports, and ensure servers are rebooted regularly.
- Protect Passwords and Login Info: Security tools like Last Pass and Proofpoint can keep emails secure and store passwords so they can’t be discovered.
- Use End-Point Detection: End-point detection software, like Trend Micro XDR can detect cybersecurity breaches as soon as they occur, allowing an organization the opportunity to respond quickly.
- Secure Private Information: Tools like Netwrix can store patient health info and personally identifiable information, keeping it safe in the event of data breaches and other cyber attacks. This greatly reduces the risk of sensitive data being compromised and HIPAA laws being violated.
- Set Up Physical Security Measures: Digital security measures aren’t everything. Making sure doors and file cabinets are locked, as well as cameras are in place and monitored, can deter would-be attackers.
- Maintain A Security-Aware Staff: Ensuring everyone working for your healthcare organization receives regular security training is important. Encourage staff to change their passwords and familiarize themselves with response policies periodically.
Practicefirst specializes in helping healthcare organizations manage their revenue cycles effectively. Because of this commitment, we take our own cybersecurity measures very seriously. We pride ourselves in being a reputable RCM vendor that engages in all the cybersecurity practices listed above plus additional measures like Vulnerability Scanning and SEIM (Security Information and Event Management) services.
Practicefirst: Revenue Cycle Management Solutions
As an industry leader in medical practice financial management, Practicefirst has comprehensive solutions to handle everything from billing and coding to full-service practice management. Need help choosing the right RCM vendor for your organization? Practicefirst can help.
Schedule a consultation today, or contact us to learn more.
