Issues Affecting The Healthcare Sector - 1773 Words

There are many issues affecting the healthcare sector in this day and age. Some of these issues include the cost of healthcare and the rise of it, the quality or efficiency of healthcare, or the shortage of physicians. All of these issues directly affect patient care and can be avoided with proper standards and practice. However, in 2015, there is no other issue directly affecting patients, in terms of patient privacy and willingness to come back to a certain entity, more than identity theft. Background and Why Healthcare Records? Some do not understand the power a medical record can hold in the hands of criminals in the black market. Since credit card numbers can easily be shut off when it is identified as compromised, health care records†¦show more content†¦New York times state that around 4.5 million healthcare records were potentially compromised and occurred in April of 2014 (Perlroth, 2014). In terms of cyber-attacks, this is a fairly new subject area for healthcare. Now, there have been smaller attacks on healthcare due to their value, but in terms of large scale cyber-attacks, it is a fairly recent occurrence. However, it is important to note that massive healthcare breaches do not only come from the outside. There are healthcare employees involved in the stolen information as well. It is very easy for individuals with enough access to medical records to steal information or pass it on to someone else without being noticed because accessing data is seen to be in their job role. For instance, if a nurse accesses a patient record and writes down his or her social security number and date of birth, no one would think twice about it unless the nurse was seen. This is because the accessibility of the medical records was what her job entailed on a daily basis. Why don’t Healthcare Companies Simply Stop Criminals from Breaking into their Systems? Some of the reasons why these attacks occur is simply the lack of response from the healthcare entities. There are many things healthcare companies should be doing in terms of better security for their patients’ information. Some healthcare entities are not using certain security