Beacon Health Systems fell victim to a "sophisticated cyber attack," but the health agency says it hasn't found evidence of information being misused. The breach allowed unauthorized individuals to gain access to Beacon employee email boxes, which exposed personal and protected health information of some individuals, including patients, according to a news release. Beacon began mailing letters to affected individuals Friday. But Beacon, which oversees Memorial Hospital in South Bend and Elkhart General Hospital, said there "is no evidence of any actual or attempted misuse of personal or protected health information belonging to Beacon Health System patients."
Hospitals are trying new early-warning systems to monitor patients for subtle but dangerous signs of a worsening condition. After surgery or during hospitalization for illness, patients are at risk for complications that can quickly turn fatal, such as a depressed breathing rate that can lead to cardiac arrest caused by over-sedation or an adverse reaction to narcotic pain medications. Patients can show signs of deterioration—known in medical terms as "decompensation"—as many as six to eight hours ahead of a cardiac or respiratory arrest, studies show. But the signs aren't always picked up or acted upon by staff. Patients on general medical and surgical floors are usually not monitored 24/7 unlike patients in intensive care units, who are hooked up to multiple machines and monitors. [Subscription Required]
The one given across all sectors of healthcare today is that change is coming, and not the gradual kind. This is multi-billion-dollar, build-up while tearing down kind of change. If that change is to lead to dramatic improvements in the effective and efficient care of patients, our systems must be redesigned, not re-engineered. Here's why: It's a matter of life and death. On Sept. 25, 2014, Eric Duncan reported to the emergency department of the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas with a low-grade fever, abdominal pain, dizziness, and headaches.
A "sophisticated cyberattack" has compromised personal information of about 1.1 million customers of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, the region's largest health insurer, the company said Wednesday. Attackers gained access to names, birth dates, email addresses and insurance identification numbers, CareFirst officials said. The database did not include Social Security or credit card numbers, passwords or medical information. It is the third major cyberattack on a U.S. health insurer this year, coming as hackers increasingly target health care and insurance organizations for medical-related data, which can be sold for large sums on secret online marketplaces.
Using websites like Yelp, people can look up ratings and reviews for virtually any restaurant or bar. But what about hospitals, where the quality of treatment is far more important than checking whether the Caesar salad is any good. On Wednesday, a new website premiered that lets you check how good a hospital is. But instead 0f relying on reviews by the public, it rates hospitals based on data from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, which collects information about all medical facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funds.
Computer-assisted propofol sedation (CAPS) for moderate sedation in patients undergoing routine upper endoscopy and colonoscopy reduced recovery time by nearly 20%, researchers reported here.