Description
Objectives: To evaluate the data breaches incidents in the U.S. between 2010 and 2018, identify the characteristics of breaches involving more than a million records, and compare the changes before and after wide adoption of EHR in 2015. Methods: data breach incidents between 2010 to 2018 were retrieved from the portal of the Office of Civil Rights. Descriptive statistical analyses were performed to assess the trends and characteristics, and changes between states from 2015 to 2018 were assessed and mapped. Results: From 2010 to 2018, a total of 2,529 breaches affected 194.74 million individual records. Overall, 72.08% incidents involved healthcare providers; theft (32.94%) and hacking (22.7%) were major types of breaches. Large cases affecting more than a million records happened due to compromised internal structures and systems. After 2015, the magnitude of the data breaches has changed at varying levels in the U.S. states necessitating further research and actions.
Learning Objective: After participating in this session, the learner should be better able to:
1. Understand the trends of reported health data breaches in the U.S. from 2010 to 2018.
2. Learn the prevalent types, locations, and characteristics of data breaches in different healthcare settings affecting the safety of protected health information covered under HIPAA.
3. Learn the changes in data breaches after the mandatory adoption of electronic health records in 2015 in different states of the U.S.
4. Understand the reasons behind major data breach incidents and potential challenges and prospects of protecting patient health data.
Authors:
Md Mahbub Hossain (Presenter)
Texas A&M University
Y. Alicia Hong, George Mason University
Presentation Materials: