First, healthcare is generally a low margin business. This means that it is very difficult, especially for organizations like hospitals to make a profit on the operations of healthcare. However, it is also necessary for these organizations to continue to figure out a way to survive. One of the ways to do this is by being as savvy as possible with technology options. It’s not about cutting corners, because in healthcare, that won’t work. However, healthcare administrators are constantly looking for new, reliable, accurate ways to manage their businesses that will also allow them to provide the highest quality of care to patients.

Second, healthcare is constantly policed by numerous agencies. First, of course, are the federal government’s agencies and departments like the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and the FBI (yes, the FBI). They look for bills not supported by patient records and levy some big fines and in some cases, jail time!) These federal agencies are followed closely by state departments of health, state insurance commissioners’ offices, local government, and national regulatory agencies like JCAHO (The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) and NCQA (National Committee for Quality Assurance). There are also many patient rights organizations like the Patient Privacy Rights Organization that provide additional layers of protection for healthcare consumers. From the hospital administrator’s perspective, these organizations all mean one thing: run a tight ship. This is incentive enough for healthcare providers to do the right thing when it comes to protection of your health information.

Third, there is a glut of legacy technology companies who provide choices to hospitals. Although healthcare providers do not replace their entire information management systems every few years, there are many technology companies whose primary existence is premised upon building easy to use systems that sit on top of older technology to make sure the providers are in compliance with the law. More importantly, these technology programs allow healthcare providers to take advantage of upgrades in current technology on an ongoing basis. The security and privacy protections that hospitals use today to protect your health information are far superior to those available a decade ago. Granted some of these improvements are the result of stories about patient medical records ending up on the internet or in other compromising situations. These singular stories, which have not really captured headlines since about 2003, were inappropriate and unacceptable. The providers and their technology firms all paid for their error. But, more importantly, they served as an example for what we could not allow to have happen again in healthcare. While there will never be a 100 percent guarantee that your information will never be released in error, it is much closer to that number today than it was ten years ago. And, assuming Moore’s law continues to be on track, we can continue to expect improvements in technology protecting our information every year and a half going forward.