Former Hospital Employees Are a Hidden Health Privacy Risk

Former hospital employees are a hidden threat to patients’ privacy, as they frequently walk away from their workplaces with the logins and passwords that access hospital electronic health record systems.

Government enforcers are putting hospitals on notice that it has to stop. Hospitals have been hit with nearly $10 million in penalties for data breaches engineered by former employees over the last four years that exposed more than 120,000 patient records to potential fraud and abuse.

Hospitals need to review password policies, be on alert for employees that share logins and passwords, and pay attention to how they handle terminated ...