Digital age poses risks for health care providers, Lloyd’s chairman warns
The chairman of Lloyd’s of London, the venerable insurer of risks worldwide, is calling upon the U.S. health care industry to prepare for the risks of the digital age.
Addressing the Physician Insurer Association of America recently in Washington, DC, Max Taylor warned that with new technology come new risks. Computer viruses and hackers presents an increasingly real threat, he said.
"As we become more reliant upon technology, the health care industry faces serious challenges," Taylor said. "If a hacker or technology glitch damaged all systems, would organizations be able to cope — to function, even? Could patients be admitted? Could patients be treated?"
Taylor said the recent "Lovebug" virus was "the tip of the iceberg" in terms of virus threats, but he warned that more sinister threats are posed by computer hackers. Recent instances of patient security breaches include a case where hackers gained access to a U.S. academic medical institution’s records and maliciously published them on an Internet bulletin board. The implications for a facility involved in this sort of incident do not stop at the inconvenience of a disabled network or the costs of litigation that may follow from those whose private details are made public, he said.
"Invasion of patient confidentiality is a huge issue on a number of fronts," he explained. "In the longer term, poor public perception is a problem that could result in physicians leaving and [being] unwilling to practice in a facility and patients unwilling to be treated there due to fears regarding security."
His comments come as new Health Industry Portability and Accountability Act legislation forces the U.S. health care industry to change the way it operates. Lloyd’s recently began offering insurance coverage that extends traditional policies to the loss of intellectual property, extortion, and costs associated with hackers and viruses and fraudulent acts by employees. The first two policyholders were academic medical institutions.
However, Taylor warned that insuring against hackers and viruses is not the end of the line.
"Health care organizations need to encourage much closer partnership between their IT [information technology] departments and risk managers," he says. "By working together, the risks of damage to individual network systems and the need for insurance coverage can be more accurately assessed, but there is also more scope to reduce these risks in the first place."
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