Taming the security fears of transparency

An increasing number of hospitals and health systems are following the adage “honesty is the best policy” and becoming more publicly transparent in everything from quality data to costs. But as patients become more informed and security risks grow with broader use of the Internet, honesty cannot be the only policy.

Sharing information always introduces the opportunity for security risks, namely when that sharing is done electronically, says W. Reese Hirsch, a partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, LLP, in San Francisco and a healthcare law regulatory and transactional expert.