LAS VEGAS -- A federal deadline hangs over hospitals and clinics to move patient medical records from paper to computers. But there are concerns especially since it is not usual for companies to become the target of hackers.
It's one thing for a company's computers to be targeted by hackers for credit card information. It's quite another thing when medical records go online because they can be a target with private and potentially embarrassing health information for the taking.
Nurses at Sunrise Hospital are not only trained in medicine, they're now trained in information gathering. They are feeding the database that forms the hospital's new electronic medical records system.
"A lot of the antibiotics and vital signs, height and weight. First allergies, those kinds of things. Those have to be entered into the computer system by the end of the year," said Minta Albietz, Sunrise chief nursing officer.
A federal deadline looms over every hospital and clinic. But a recent audit by the Department of Health and Human Services highlights nationwide security holes in keeping medical records private. Lamont McCue, the president of Las Vegas technology firm Q-Digital, read the audit.
"The software is pretty secure but the overall infrastructure is lacking," said McCue. But the greatest threat to patient privacy may come from within.
"Rogue employees, by employees accidentally installing software on their systems that inadvertently steals information," said McCue.
Sunrise says their hospitals are securing their computers and their network from attack by doing the following.
"Two ID's they have to enter into a computer. ID's are changed frequently. It's not something you can just randomly figure out," said Albietz.
Easy access to patient medical information is seen as the next major tool for doctors but hospitals haven't heard an exact federal deadline.
"It's about the timeline that everyone's estimating. The next big change will happen when physicians will not be able to use pen and paper anymore to write orders or to write a progress note," said Albietz.
Turning piles of medical paperwork into electronic records does not come cheap. University Medical Center says it will cost them $60 million. But the county's public hospital is $35 million short and is struggling to meet the deadline.
