Sen. Bruce Thompson (R – White) announces the release of a report containing research he conducted with the Institute for Healthcare Information Technology (IHIT) on how health care data is increasingly becoming more popular among hackers. This evolving cyber security issue is growing because electronic health care records can be worth more than any other data on the black market.

“Every single community, every single family, and every single one of us is either currently or will be impacted by a cybersecurity attack,” said Sen. Thompson. “Even though our state is ahead of others in some ways with our Augusta Cybersecurity Center, we have a whole network of fragile, rural hospitals that our constituents depend on for their health, jobs and community services. Our hospitals should be safe zones for people, but instead, they are under attack, and we need to provide resources to help them. We need all hands-on deck.”

According to the HIPPA Journal, health care data breaches reported between 2009 and 2018 have resulted in the theft or exposure of almost 190 million healthcare records, a number equal to 59% of the U.S. population. Sen. Thompson was the impetus behind a grassroots initiative that brought together hospital CIOs statewide to research and discuss the magnitude of the problem along with measures to support cybersecurity.

Please follow the link below for the full “The State of Cybersecurity Among Georgia Hospitals” report:

http://instituteforhealthcareit.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019_TAG_Digital_Health.pdf