As the rapidly evolving healthcare industry faces increasing challenges to keeping PHI protected, there is a growing need to ensure knowledgeable and credentialed security and privacy practitioners are in place to protect this sensitive information. Health IT security expert Sarah Hendrickson further discusses how healthcare organizations can provide a frontline of defense for PHI.
A recent report from Redspin, Inc., a Carpinteria, Calif.-based provider of IT security assessments, revealed that in 2013, the number of protected health information (PHI) breaches were up 138 percent from 2012, with 199 incidents of breaches of PHI reported to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) impacting over 7 million patient records.
