Netgain

Business owners must be reassured that investing in outsourced IT services will be worth the cost.  The real costs are not in the payment for services, but in the shortcomings that can arise if these services are not retained.  IT failures raise costs in terms of lost productivity, compromised data, and regulatory issues. Here are three specific ways that your IT partner prevents failures and reduces the likelihood of costly mistakes associated with your IT. 

Earlier this year Robert E. Watson, president and CEO, Streamline Health wrote an article for Healthcare IT News in which he discussed the exploding growth of IT in healthcare applications.  In this article he states, “In a matter of years, the healthcare industry has changed from measuring the size of data in terabytes and petabytes to exabytes and even zettabytes—and this volume of data is doubling every year.”

This rapid increase in Healthcare IT (HIT) volume could well be one of the key reasons for an increased trend for hospitals toward outsourcing these functions.  An article in Becker’s Hospital Review last fall indicated that “The U.S. healthcare IT outsourcing market is expected to grow by 42.8 percent in the next five years”.

Data breaches are a growing problem for IT security professionals across various segments of the economy as cyber criminals infiltrate security systems undetected and steal valuable corporate and customer information.  Last year, the nationwide data breach experienced at Target retail stores compromised the personal and financial information of a combined 110 million customers during the busy holiday shopping season, the New York Times reported.  While data breaches in the retail industry may grab the most headlines, security issues found in healthcare organizations could leave them even more vulnerable to being targeted by cyber attacks and exposing protected health information (PHI).

The importance of cybersecurity has received a lot of news attention lately with Target and eBay both making headlines due to massive IT security breaches involving people’s financial information. Huge numbers of individuals were forced to cancel their credit cards as well as their bank and PayPal accounts and open new ones.  The risk of hackers discovering a person’s financial information was great, but the remedy, although inconvenient, was fairly simple.

As the healthcare industry continues to undergo changes, more tools are being used to create operating efficiencies and coordinate better care for patients. For physicians, hospitals, administrators and healthcare IT administrators, it is essential that the privacy and safety of electronic health records (EHR) remain a high priority. 

With the recent "Heartbleed" scare, IT security is once again a hot topic. As well it should be, for this is nothing new. Data breaches in the healthcare industry have facilitated the need for a renewal of the conversation time and time again. If you don't believe us, read on, as we take a look at some of the worst healthcare security breaches to date.