Dive Brief:
- Consumers will see an increase in successful cyberattacks against their online health records next year due to poor electronic security in healthcare, according to IDC’s Health Insights group.
- Among other things, healthcare records can be used by criminals to file fraudulent medical claims and to get medications to resell, CIO reports.
- According to FBI statistics, healthcare fraud costs the industry $74 billion to $247 billion a year in the U.S.
Dive Insight:
"Healthcare data is really valuable from a cyber criminal standpoint,” said Lynne Dunbrack, research vice president for IDC's Health Insights. “It could be 5, 10 or even 50 times more valuable than other forms of data.”
Fraudulent billing represents between 3% and 10% of healthcare expenditures in the U.S. each year, Dunbrack said.
Several healthcare providers experienced significant breaches this year, including Anthem and Premera Blue Cross, who reported breaches of 80 million records and 11 million records, respectively.
"Part of this increase [in cyber attacks] is because there's more electronic data than ever before," Dunbrack said. "Some of the things leading to attacks are good things. For example, digitized formats allow [sharing] patient data among providers."
