4 Things You Need to Know About Cyberattacks in Healthcare

Despite the explosion of ransomware hacks like the one against Change Healthcare, regulation is patchy and few new safeguards have been offered to protect patient data , vulnerable hospitals and medical services. groups.

The recent cyberattack on billing and payment colossus Change Healthcare has revealed just how serious the vulnerabilities are across the entire US healthcare system and has alerted industry executives and policy makers to the problem. urgent need for better digital security.

Hospitals, health insurers, medical clinics and other industry players are increasingly being targeted by hacks significant, culminating in the assault on Change, a unit of giant UnitedHealth Group, on February 21.

Ransomware attack on largest exchange of the country, which manages a third of all patient files, has had widespread effects. Patches and workarounds have eased some pain, but providers are still unable to collect billions of dollars in payments. Many small hospitals and medical practices are still struggling to get paid more than a month after Change was forced to shut down many of its systems.

Even today Today, very little information is available. The exact nature and scale of the attack have been disclosed. UnitedHealth said it has advanced more than $3 billion to struggling providers and expects more of Change's services to be available in the coming weeks as systems come back online.

The F.B.I. and the Department of Health and Human Services are investigating the Change hack, including whether patient records and personal information were compromised. Since Change's network acts as a digital switchboard that connects information from the first doctor's visit to a diagnosis like cancer or depression and then subsequent treatment to a health insurer for benefits and payments, there is a risk that people's medical history will be exposed for years. .

The attack on change is just the most ambitious example of what has become almost commonplace in health care. Ransomware attacks, in which criminals shut down computer systems unless owners pay the hackers, hit 46 hospital systems last year, up from 25 in 2022, according to data security firm Emsisoft. In recent years, hackers have also taken down companies providing services such as medical transcription and billing.

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