The Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council’s hosted the complimentary educational event “Managing Incidents in a Regulated Data World: Post Final Rule” today at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children. More than 70 attendees turned out to listen to Heather Pixton, sales and operational director at ID Experts.

Heather Pixton, ID Experts

“In healthcare, more than 93,000 data breaches were reported to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services since 2009,” said Pixton. “With more than $89 million in monetary penalties assessed since 2013 and the massive amounts of sensitive data in healthcare, this can be a potentially serious problem.”

According to Pixton, there are six keys when reducing data breach risks including security technology, privacy policies, employee training, compliance, cyber insurance and regulatory reporting.

“The key to reducing breach risk at your organization is to have visibility into what is happening with your existing incidents,” Pixton said. “An incident assessment would seem logical, but organizations struggle with them. Know the causation and understand it.”

A movement towards an automated incident assessment utilizing metrics will decrease data breaches in the future, according to Pixton.

“You must use a consistent model for assessing and analyzing incidents,” she said. “Processing the facts quickly across locations and types allows you to more quickly identify high risk breach areas.”

For more information on the presentation, please contact Kristin Alexander at 972-719-4900 or kalexander@dfwhc.org.