Essay on Healthcare Quality, Risk and Regulatory Compliance: Data Loss Prevention in Cleveland Hospital
In healthcare organizations, there are tons of stored personal information of patients. This information ranges from payment details, social security numbers, insurance data, and health records and charts. One of the significant responsibilities of healthcare facilities is to ensure that their patients’ data are safe. As a result, it is essential to ensure cybersecurity in healthcare facilities. However, there have been many data breaches in hospitals, making it hard to ensure data safety. One healthcare facility that has been affected by data loss. Two years ago, it was reported that a third-party dealer had completed a mundane update on the university’s computer systems. Afterward, a hard drive from Cleveland hospital went missing. This drive contained patient’s information like social security numbers, information about treatment of patients, home addresses, dates of birth, insurance providers, and their names (Burdick, 2019). Therefore, Cleveland hospital lost a massive amount of its patients’ data to outside parties.
To prevent such occurrences, healthcare organizations are required to comply with the DLP regulatory requirements. This is a technology that helps to detect any data misuse or potential data theft. Many firms believe that applying DLP is merely enough; however, they are unaware that they are still vulnerable to data breaches (Premanick, 2021). Nonetheless, in healthcare facilities, the DLP regulatory compliance that can be used is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA). The HIPPA comprises a set of rules that ensure the confidentiality of end-users’ data (Gaur et al., 2021). Since every health organization deals with crucial patient data, they should take procedural, physical, and network security measures. While this was unfortunate, Cleveland hospital could have employed significant regulative measures to prevent this incidence. There is a high probability that the hospital’s management failed to follow all the rules comprised in the HIPPA, and as a result, some of their crucial data was easily stolen.
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Many damaging implications can arise from the loss of data within a healthcare organization. One most common consequence is that it negatively impacts the financial health of an organization. Loss of patient data can result in the economic crippling of a healthcare facility because it may lock out workers as the situation is being resolved. Laying off workers, in turn, may result in canceling patient appointments, ultimately resulting in revenue loss for the firm. Other than that, the healthcare organization may need to install more security measures to prevent a recurrence of a similar situation, and this may cost a significant percentage of their annual funds. Aside from the adverse financial impact on the organization, loss of data may ruin the facility’s reputation (Dameff, Pfeffer, & Longhurst, 2019). For instance, when the Cleveland Hospital Breach occurred, it is highly likely that most patients whose data was breached lost their trust in the hospital and looked elsewhere for healthcare services. Based on the fact that customers are vital shareholders within an organization, this aspect dramatically hinders the productivity of healthcare facilities. Overall, Since Cleveland Hospital lost a significant portion of its data to third parties, the severity of this issue cannot be ignored – the hospital was negatively impacted both in its financial and productivity aspects.
An environmental assessment of a healthcare organization entails touring and observing the workplace to comprehend the factors that may be beneficial or non-beneficial to an organization. In this case, an environmental assessment would entail analyzing the physical and functional aspects of the computers systems of Cleveland hospital. The best tools that can be used in this assessment include cyber security paid network tools like Nmap, Paros Proxy, Nikto, Metasploit, and WireShark. The five primary steps that can be used in these assessments are determining the risk assessment’s scope, identifying cybersecurity risks by identifying assets, threats, and what could go wrong; analyzing risks and determining their possible impacts; determining and prioritizing tasks; and lastly, documenting all risks (Meir, 2021). Through a thorough assessment of the computer systems, the organization can identify all the prevailing loopholes within the system and innovate ways that it can use to solve them to prevent a recurrence of the loss of data issue. In essence, they will apply more effective control measures to handle data security within the facility.
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