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A couple of years back I met with someone from a communist country. Before starting the conversation, he made sure that we both had our phones off and that the battery was removed. His actions surprised me as all we were going to talk about was based on actuaries and trends of illnesses is based on the physical location of the patients. He explained that based on his Government’s technical capabilities and manipulation of data it was a matter of survival to ensure that conversations were not recorded.

In the United States, we have been lucky and naïve as we continue to depend on mobile devices to simplify our lives without considering the consequences of this dependence.

Most of the time we do our research and posts accordingly, however, cyber-observers in their “29 Must-Know Cybersecurity Statistics for 2020” post did such a good job that the best thing we can do for our readers is to refer to the same for information regarding 2020 Cybersecurity trends.

For example, the top five cybersecurity trends identified were:

1. Worldwide spending on cybersecurity is going to reach $133.7 billion in 2022. (Gartner)
2. 68% of business leaders feel their cybersecurity risks are increasing.
3. Data breaches exposed 4.1 billion records in the first half of 2019. (RiskBased)
4. 71% of breaches were financially motivated and 25% were motivated by espionage. (Verizon)
5. 52% of breaches featured hacking, 28% involved malware and 32–33% included phishing or social engineering, respectively. (Verizon)

Another key piece of information presented included the most common causes of a data breach:

Cybercrime could be defined as criminal activities involving the use of computers and/or the Internet. As the FBI states in their web page: “The FBI is the lead federal agency for investigating cyber-attacks by criminals, overseas adversaries, and terrorists. The threat is incredibly serious—and growing. Cyber intrusions are becoming more commonplace, more dangerous, and more sophisticated.”

In fact, the 2017 Cybercrime Report posted by the Herjavec Group, reported that cybercrime damages will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021. Additional highlights of this report included:

Cybercrime costs include damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity, theft…

Early this year at the Compliance and Healthcare Innovation Conference, hosted by EPI Conferences, one of the topics presented was cyber security. This presentation itself was quite interesting but the thing that I didn’t get until now was that most presenters referred to cyber security in their presentations.

Cyber security refers to the initiatives and efforts directed towards the protection of computer systems and networks against attacks, damage or unauthorized access. Normally these efforts include initiatives such as conducting security audits, installing software patches, auditing transactions between systems and networks and even encrypting systems, to mention a few.

Cyber attacks…

We are constantly doing research and applying the same towards what we should be doing to prepare. In a way we consider this effort and the product of the same our “Healthcare Business Priorities”.

Let’s backtrack and expand on this concept. The reality of the healthcare business is that it is in constant flux. Not only are there new techniques and protocols to help patients but also laws, regulations, technology and client behavior. In fact, if there is something that alerts us of issues, it is when we hear the phrase: “we had always done it this way”.

Face it…

After a year of preparation, we had the opportunity to participate in the EPI Compliance & Healthcare Innovation Conference. The event as you will hear from attendees was intense and well worth attending. There was so much information crammed that there is no way for any one person to retain all of it yet there are some lessons learned we can share with all.

Cannabis. This presentation was given by Dr. Joseph Rosado who cover benefits, licensing and medical benefits of cannabis. Among some of the benefits discussed included:

• Marijuana helps veterans suffering from PTSD.

It can be…

It has taken me three days to recover from the EPI Conference that took place at the Royal Pacific Resort in Orlando, Florida. The conference was designed to cover a HIPAA Security Bootcamp, a networking event and the actual topics for the conference. There was so much going on that I will not try to cover everything but simply provide a brief after action report.

HIPAA Security Bootcamp. Intense may not be the right word to describe this EPI Conference event but it may be somewhat close. The event started at 8:30 AM sharp and didn’t finish until 5:30 PM…

As the month of January comes to an end I’m looking at what is to come and what should be the Healthcare Business Priorities for 2018.

MACRA. For those that see Medicare patients and fall under Medicare’s new quality payment program we cannot under emphasize the need to report 2017 measures before March 31, 2018. At the same time, we strongly recommend starting to track the data for 2018 and staying in touch as these measures are already changing and we will not know the final 2018 measures for a while.

Business Plan. Healthcare Business Priorities for 2018 are not…