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Survey says majority of hospitals ill-prepared for data loss
Now you can collect it, share it, and increasingly analyze it to put it good use. But what happens if you lose it?
According to a new report by Bridgehead Software, a majority of hospitals aren’t ready for the possibility of losing their electronic health data.
Following a survey of 158 US and UK healthcare IT executives, the report notes that "The one possibility that seems to worry health IT professionals more than any other is that important patient information can be irretrievably lost or damaged, whether because of negligence, a malicious hacking attack, a system outage or a disaster.”
Some of the report’s highlights include:
• 65% said data volumes had increased over the previous year, 30% did not know how much data volumes had changed, and 5% said data volumes had decreased or stayed the same
• PACS applications were cited as the number-one reason for healthcare data growth (63%), followed by files held in the electronic health record (54%) and scanned documents such as proof of insurance (51%)
• 90% said their facilities had a plan to go at least partially paperless with their electronic patient records
• 32% said they planned to move to a new PACS within the next 5 years
• 64% said their organizations had some kind of disaster recovery strategy in place, but the majority (38%) had never been tested
According to the report’s executive summary, “the survey found that disaster recovery (DR) was once again considered the top IT issue, with 54.6% of respondents choosing backup/DR as one of their top three IT investment priorities for the next year.”
And the situation is nothing if not fluid, as the summary also noted “the global healthcare industry generates approximately 30% of the world’s data – a massive amount that increases day after day. It is driven partly by legislative mandates, partly by the emergence of more sophisticated healthcare technologies, and partly by the increase in files generated by hospital office and administration systems. 46.8% of respondents to BridgeHead Software’s 2011 International Healthcare Data Management Survey reported an increase in data volume in 2010 of up to 25% on the year before, with another 12.7% indicating they had seen a rise between 25% and 50%. Overall, two-thirds of hospitals surveyed said their data volumes had increased over the previous year. A scant 4.8% said data volumes had decreased or stayed the same.”
In other words, healthcare data is piling up, and not nearly enough organizations are prepared for the possibility of losing it.
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