Survey: Data breaches affecting customer relations

modernhealthcare.com

What harm can a data breach do? Not much, provided you don’t care about retaining a relationship with your patients or health plan members.

But if amicable customer relations are important to your organization, breaches can be a nasty problem, according to a Traverse City, Mich.,-based researcher. Now that 47 states and the federal government have enacted breach notification laws, there is a growing awareness among the general population about data breaches, according to a recently released consumer survey by the Ponemon Institute, which had a 2005 survey for comparison. 

In that earlier survey, 12% of respondents indicated they had been contacted about a breach involving their personal information. In the recent survey, that number more than doubled to 25% (708 who said they had experienced a breach out of 2,832 respondents to the Web-based survey.)

The survey, sponsored by Experian, the credit bureau that sells identity theft protection services, broadly assessed consumer attitudes and experiences about breaches across an array of industries, healthcare information breaches included. 

Ten percent of those who had experienced a breach of their records said their medical and healthcare records were lost or stolen, with 5% saying the breach involved their health plan provider account numbers and 3% their prescriptions. Eight percent said they had received breach notices from hospitals or clinics, 2% from an insurance company and 9% from a state or local government agency.

Just 35% of respondents who reported having experienced a breach indicated it was only one. Another 30% had been through two breaches, 14% three and 7% four, 5% five and 9% more than five.

More here: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20120604/NEWS/120609978/survey-data-breaches-affecting-customer-relations?AllowView=VW8xUmo5Q21TcWJOb1gzb0tNN3RLZ0h0MWg5SVgra3NZRzROR3l0WWRMVGJVdjBGRWxiNUtpQzMyNVdyNFh3WUpidXBiUVFxMVZVYyt5S1REZVl3emltR285QzdXdHFtR3FvY0RLMEF5Sy90ZU96by9zOUdaTXVUNndaL0I2bzFuMnNOdWVNPQ==