February saw 31 healthcare breach incidents, representing 206,151 impacted patient records, according to a Protenus report.
The report, which is part of the Protenus Breach Barometer monthly series, analyzes healthcare breaches reported to HHS or disclosed to the media during February 2017.
Here are five insights.
1. Insiders were responsible for the majority (58 percent) of breaches in February. Of these 18 incidents, nine were attributed to insider error and eight were attributed to insider wrongdoing.
2. Other sources of healthcare breach incidents in February were loss or theft (19 percent) and hacking (12 percent). The remaining 10 percent of breaches had unknown origins.
3. The largest incident in February involved 100,000 patient records. It was the result of insider error.
4. It took an average of 478 days from the time the breach occurred for healthcare organizations to notify HHS. There were two instances in which organizations took more than five years to discover the data breach occurred.
5. January also saw 31 healthcare breach incidents, representing 388,207 patient records. Although the incident number remained steady, February had a 47 percent decrease in the number of impacted patient records.
"February's health data breaches reinforce the importance of understanding inappropriate workforce activity," according to the report. "It's important for healthcare organizations to use advanced analytics to immediately detect breaches of this magnitude in real-time, greatly reducing the impact for patients and organizations alike."
Click here to view the full report.