Do health organizations take the required measures to escape the costly fines for violation of HIPAA and leakages of patients' information? Recently a case was posted about a fine against Providence Medical Institute: the organization had to pay $240,000 as a result of a ransomware attack that caused a breach of 85,000 individuals' ePHI. The National Institute of Standards pointed out that insufficient security and the missing key safeguards were the leading causes of the breach. This article points out some of the lessons that healthcare organizations can utilize in strengthening their cybersecurity practices to enable them to avoid such expensive mistakes.

Background on the Case

There was an attack by ransomware at Providence Medical Institute, an action that led to the leakage of sensitive patient data. As noted by OCR, the investigation revealed a number of HIPAA violations, including failure to have a business associate agreement and failure to implement appropriate access controls. These compromised some of Providence's security procedures that the hackers manipulated to infiltrate ePHI. According to HealthCareIT News, this serves as a significant reminder of having appropriate IT controls and abiding by HIPAA rules.

Key Takeaways for Healthcare Organizations

The case of the Providence Medical Institute has pointed out the need for healthcare organizations to apply cybersecurity measures that can match the challenge. It is essential to undertake such security assessments and vulnerability tests since IT systems, especially in healthcare organizations, may be vulnerable to ransomware kinds of attacks. For security, each organization should implement:

• Multi-factor authentication to securely access sensitive information.
• Strong password policies to reduce unauthorized access.
• Regular updates to security protocols and systems to keep ahead of new threats.

Healthcare organizations should design and update security policies laying out clear access controls to ePHI. Besides that, it is very necessary to have regular training among staff to infuse a culture of compliance. Based on insights from Mooresville IT support experts, deploying intricate security processes

are highly instrumental in helping an organization design and maintain secure IT systems, which are the foundational requirements to avoid risks that healthcare industries have fallen prey to.

A well-developed incident response plan can provide effective and timely action when data breaches occur. Regular training and simulation exercises will lead to the preparedness of your staff, which responds to security incidents and minimizes impact. According to a report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, organizations that are better prepared minimize losses due to data breaches.

Financial Implications of Non-Compliance

Serious financial impacts are associated with HIPAA non-compliance in the form of fines, legal fees, and reputational damage. The fine imposed on Providence Medical of $240,000 shows only one possibility of the cost involved. Appropriate cybersecurity and compliance measures are highly required in order to avoid long-term impacts, which have been noted by research from the HIPAA Journal, with an increasing number of penalties being levied against healthcare organizations.

The Bottom Line

The case of Providence Medical Institute does well to illustrate how compliance with HIPAA and measures that are proactive, in the form of strong cybersecurity with staff training, will come first. For the protection of all patient data without incurring costly consequences of non-compliance, ePHI protection needs to be at the top of every healthcare organization's priority list.