Healthcare IT Update

Despite new legal requirements like HITECH, health care organizations have not made a lot of progress in the last year in preparing for security challenges such as privacy breaches and electronic PHI, according to a new survey released Nov. 3, 2009 by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.

“Healthcare organizations have made relatively little change since the assessment of the market HIMSS conducted in 2008 across a number of important areas of the security environment,” warns the industry group in its 2009 Security Survey. “Respondents characterized their own maturity level as mid-range, budgets dedicated to security remain low, and many organizations still do not have a formally designated CSO/CISO.”

“Also,” according to HIMSS, “organizations often do not have a plan for responding to threats or incidents relating to a security breach.” And only three-quarters of the respondent organizations perform risk assessments.

Of…