Cyberattacks against outpatient, specialty clinics on the rise as data breaches double from 2018

The neighborhood family clinic down the street is no longer safe from hackers. Healthcare data breaches are not only on the rise, but they are also spreading like a virus from hospitals to smaller provider facilities, a new report finds.

Healthcare breaches have nearly doubled since 2018 and continued to climb through the first half of 2021, according to a report by Critical Insight, a Seattle-based healthcare-focused cybersecurity firm.

The neighborhood family clinic down the street is no longer safe.

And those breaches, mostly hacking/IT security incidents, can affect millions of healthcare records.

Tallahassee-based Florida Healthy Kids Corp. health plan revealed this year that it had been hacked over a seven-year period affecting 3.5 million patient records. Exposed information included Social Security numbers, dates of birth, names, addresses and financial information.