Patient Records: A Crisis Waiting to Happen

The question isn’t if there will soon be a major security breach involving patient records, it’s when.

A new survey of 65 health care organizations, conducted by the Ponemon Institute and commissioned by ID Experts, a provider of data security software, finds that not only are breaches continuing to happen on a regular basis, they are costing these organizations on average $2 million each over a two-year period.

That may sound like a big number, but it’s actually relatively small given the number of breaches reported. That suggests that it’s only a matter of time before a major breach results in millions of dollars in lost income and revenue for health care organizations.