Interesting - the day of the AT&T massive outage, that Jeff covered on his C&C blog, a number of commenters on that post who are pharmacists noted that their systems were also down that day and wondered if the 2 were related.
Having experienced significant personal challenges resulting from provider deletion of an extremely important health record that had been digitized and the original record shredded, I have never been tolerant of the blank-eyed stares and bland reassurances of anyone saying that electronic health records are secure.
Digitizing health records have made them ephemera and an income source for others, based partly on that ephemeral quality.
Yes, the system for payers, pharmacists and providers is complete garbage. Consider this; at many sites if you tell them upfront you are paying cash you get a 50% discount or more! So the corrupt and inefficient insurance industry is driving up the price of healthcare to the tune of at least 50%. Then we wonder why so many cannot afford healthcare. I work on the research side of things, the horror stories I could tell perpetuated by the big pharma and device companies, to line their own pockets and drive up costs is staggering. If you are not corrupt, you cannot play with the big boys. We believe the waste in research could exceed 80%. Talk about an entire industry that needs to start over.
If past data breeches are any indicator, there will be an ever increasing cascade of medical record and healthcare data breeches. I remember the bad old days of the 1980s. I held a security clearance and quite complacently never worried about it. Then in 1993 we had the first massive security clearance data breech. All of us that had clearances got a vague, yet impersonal letter from "The Pentagon" informing us that it had been discovered that the data from our security clearance interviews and disclosures had mysteriously been captured by both the non-Soviet Russians and the Chinese. It made me very circumspect in all subsequent renewal interviews and disclosures. There were at least 3 repeats of this episode before 2000. Then it all went quite on the security clearance data breech front until 2009. Then there were data breeches at many Federal levels. For me it was the Agency that was conducting our security clearance renewals and the Agency I worked for. My agency had a personnel data breech every six months like clockwork. It was always explained that someone from HQ would take an unencrypted laptop containing the personal information for every single Agency employee to the food court across the street during lunch hour and then leave it there. The Feds were always providing "free credit monitoring" for everyone in my Agency. Of course, when you acknowledged the free credit monitoring there was a clause in there giving the Feds permission to examine your credit report at any time. How thoughtful. My Security Clearance data was sold to the Chinese so many times I lost track. Then the notices of data breeches mysteriously stopped in 2016 and started back up in 2021. I'm sure there is a pattern there, but I just can't put my finger on it... The last one I got, as a retiree, was a few months ago. Once the pipeline for these things is built, it never goes away.
Interesting - the day of the AT&T massive outage, that Jeff covered on his C&C blog, a number of commenters on that post who are pharmacists noted that their systems were also down that day and wondered if the 2 were related.
Of course they have patient data from electronic health records. How could they not? https://rumble.com/v4f9f4t-all-electronic-health-records-and-telehealth-sessions-are-at-risk.html
"I'll take, Things that make you go, hmmm for $2000, Alex!"
Having experienced significant personal challenges resulting from provider deletion of an extremely important health record that had been digitized and the original record shredded, I have never been tolerant of the blank-eyed stares and bland reassurances of anyone saying that electronic health records are secure.
Digitizing health records have made them ephemera and an income source for others, based partly on that ephemeral quality.
It was never about efficiency or convenience.
Yes, the system for payers, pharmacists and providers is complete garbage. Consider this; at many sites if you tell them upfront you are paying cash you get a 50% discount or more! So the corrupt and inefficient insurance industry is driving up the price of healthcare to the tune of at least 50%. Then we wonder why so many cannot afford healthcare. I work on the research side of things, the horror stories I could tell perpetuated by the big pharma and device companies, to line their own pockets and drive up costs is staggering. If you are not corrupt, you cannot play with the big boys. We believe the waste in research could exceed 80%. Talk about an entire industry that needs to start over.
The system that needs to be rebuilt from the garbage it is? One could only hope.
Bahahaha!!
Amen sister!
It is garbage.
EMR=Empathy Machine Reducer
I spent 90% of my day uploading data to insurers on EMR and 10% on my patients.
If past data breeches are any indicator, there will be an ever increasing cascade of medical record and healthcare data breeches. I remember the bad old days of the 1980s. I held a security clearance and quite complacently never worried about it. Then in 1993 we had the first massive security clearance data breech. All of us that had clearances got a vague, yet impersonal letter from "The Pentagon" informing us that it had been discovered that the data from our security clearance interviews and disclosures had mysteriously been captured by both the non-Soviet Russians and the Chinese. It made me very circumspect in all subsequent renewal interviews and disclosures. There were at least 3 repeats of this episode before 2000. Then it all went quite on the security clearance data breech front until 2009. Then there were data breeches at many Federal levels. For me it was the Agency that was conducting our security clearance renewals and the Agency I worked for. My agency had a personnel data breech every six months like clockwork. It was always explained that someone from HQ would take an unencrypted laptop containing the personal information for every single Agency employee to the food court across the street during lunch hour and then leave it there. The Feds were always providing "free credit monitoring" for everyone in my Agency. Of course, when you acknowledged the free credit monitoring there was a clause in there giving the Feds permission to examine your credit report at any time. How thoughtful. My Security Clearance data was sold to the Chinese so many times I lost track. Then the notices of data breeches mysteriously stopped in 2016 and started back up in 2021. I'm sure there is a pattern there, but I just can't put my finger on it... The last one I got, as a retiree, was a few months ago. Once the pipeline for these things is built, it never goes away.
Klause Schwab and the ghost of Kissinger.