E-Health: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Pharmacy and health system providers need to double down on cybersecurity efforts in order to keep the good that comes from our electronic health systems from becoming the bad and the ugly.

Scanning the news before I sat down to write this regular column for Pharmacy Technology & Management Review (PTMR), I was surprised to see that another cyberattack had disrupted clinical operations at the Ascension healthcare system. Ascension operates 140 hospitals and 40 senior living facilities in 19 states. The company advised its healthcare clients to temporarily cut off any network connections to the organization while they addressed the issue. The company is trying to determine if any sensitive patient information has been hacked so it can notify those impacted. Less than 24 hours after the incident, it was not yet publicly known if the attack involved ransomware.

This is the second major cyberattack on U.S. healthcare organizations this year, the first being the late-February ransomware attack by a Russian group, Blackcat, against UnitedHealth Group (UHG). UHG’s Change Healthcare network was one of three major “switches” in the United States that suffered the attack, with its network clients having to disconnect their network connections to help protect their patient data. Change Healthcare is a digital payment platform that is part of UHG Optum. The attack occurred on or around Feb. 21, and by Feb. 26, UHG reported more than 90% of 70,000 pharmacies in the United States had to change how claims were processed.