Nearly 70% Of Healthcare Organizations Hit By Cyberattacks Report Patient Care Disruptions: Survey

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Dive Brief:

• More healthcare organizations are facing cyberattacks, and the incidents are taking a toll on patient care, according to a survey by cybersecurity company Proofpoint and research firm Ponemon Institute. 
• The report found 92% of healthcare organizations experienced at least one cyberattack in the past 12 months, compared with 88% last year. Nearly 70% said the attacks disrupted patient care.
• Among the organizations that faced four common types of cyberattacks, 56% reported poor patient outcomes due to care delays, 53% said they experienced an increase in procedure complications and 28% said patient mortality rates rose. 

Dive Insight: 

The survey, which collected responses from nearly 650 IT and security practitioners, aimed to determine if the sector had made progress addressing cyber risks. Cyberattacks have become an increasingly serious challenge for healthcare organizations as the number of incidents rise. 

Attacks on hospitals can limit access to critical technology systems and patient information, but cyberattacks on vendors or suppliers can be disruptive as well. For example, the incident at technology firm and payment processor earlier this year Change Healthcare slowed reimbursement to providers for weeks.

Recovering from a cyberattack can be pricey, according to the survey. The average cost for organizations’ single most expensive cyberattack over the past 12 months was $4.7 million, a 5% decrease from last year.

Yet, healthcare organizations face significant challenges to improving their cybersecurity, even as companies invest more money in information technology. 

The average annual IT budget is $66 million, but 40% of organizations reported their cyber budgets were still insufficient, and 42% said their organizations didn’t have enough staff. More than half of respondents said they lacked in-house cybersecurity expertise.

However, using artificial intelligence could be beneficial for healthcare organizations looking to boost their cybersecurity, according to the survey. More than half of IT professionals said their organizations had embedded AI in cybersecurity. 

But IT professionals also noted risks to integrating AI in their cybersecurity practices. Sixty-three percent of respondents reported it’s difficult or very difficult to safeguard confidential and sensitive patient data used in AI.

AI has become a hot topic generally in healthcare, but some experts and lawmakers have raised concerns about accuracy, bias and patient data privacy when it comes to integrating the technology in the sector.