Case after case after case in the news reports poor, uneducated, and unethical hospital management around The United States. In fact, Beckers Hospital Review states that 11 hospitals in 2018 are on the brink of closure. Needless to say hospitals are not without their own labor issues. Revcycle intelligence reports, "Hospitals and health systems are responding to and anticipating these labor challenges by reducing their workforce and outsourcing key roles." It's a bit ironic to think that the healthcare worker we might meet in an emergency room (ER) who is saving our life maybe severely discriminated against, a temporary employee without benefits, entirely outsourced, unable to keep the job because of maternity leave issues, or even underpaid from their peers. Turns out no one is watching; no one cares—scary, right? Please keep this all in mind as we continue to consider the HHS OCR data breach public data.
Taking the feedback from last week, I juxtaposed the HHS OCR Data Breach data with US Census data. I addition, NYP, one the largest hospitals in NYC, publicly reports their bed count. All these data sources, I aggregated to get a clearer picture of breaches and "what it means" from a size perspective. The following quantitative graph reflect the state breach quantities by state populations and the NYP bed count. In addition, the blue boxes represent the number of breaches for a particular state, so we can how many breaches occurred for the affected individuals.
