Hospital data breaches continue to grow

From Business Wire:

Identity Force today released its Spring 2010 National Survey of Hospital Compliance Executives. More than 200 compliance executives from AHA member hospitals in 43 states indicated data breaches and medical identity theft continue to grow despite new regulations like the Red Flag Rules and the HITECH Act, designed to protect against the theft and loss of personal information.

“Successful organizations will implement organization-wide training programs that create a ‘Breach-Free Culture’ and help eliminate patient ID misuse and fraud. These programs usually pay for themselves many times over by lowering risk and making breaches much less frequent. Avoiding one substantial breach can save millions of dollars in costs.”

“It turns out that addressing the problems of data breaches and medical identity theft is proving more complex and time-consuming than hospitals counted on. It’s interesting that many compliance experts now call into question whether or not even the new Healthcare Reform Law will ultimately help on these issues,” said Steven Bearak, CEO of Identity Force. “We are simply copying, digitizing and disseminating personal information faster than we can control it.”