One hacking incident reported in January accounted for 59 percent of the total number of breached patient records that month, according to a Protenus report.
The report, part of the "Protenus Breach Barometer" monthly series, analyzed healthcare breaches reported to HHS or disclosed to the media throughout January 2018.
Here are six things to know.
1. There were a total of 37 health data breaches in the month of January, which affected 473,807 patient records.
2. The single largest incident, in which an unauthorized third party gained access to Medicaid patient information, compromised the records of 279,865 patients, although the investigation did not find any evidence the information was removed from the servers.
3. About 39 percent of January's breaches involved hacking, affecting 393,766 — or 83 percent — of the month's total breached records.
4. Five incidents involved insider wrongdoing, compromising 3,247 patient records. However, insider error was responsible for seven incidents (3,558 records).
5. Healthcare providers (84 percent) were most likely to disclose a breach, followed by business associates and vendors (5 percent) and health plans (3 percent).
6. Although it took one organization nearly four years to discover a data breach, most entities reported to they'd been breached to HHS within 96 days from discovery.
Click here to view the full report.
More articles on cybersecurity:
KLAS: Healthcare consulting firms, ranked
EHR vendors stock report: Week of Feb. 26 - March 2
6 questions on patient-generated health data, answered