HASC recently hosted a webinar for member hospitals on strengthening their emergency management and cybersecurity practices. The session featured Gerry Blass, chief executive officer, ComplyAssistant, and Tom Soto, CISSP, chief information officer, HASC.
Whether caused by natural or human-made disasters, outages can paralyze business operations. Blass and Soto explored ways hospitals can prepare for and respond to crises and extended downtime. They highlighted the growing number and scope of outages, including the Feb. 2024 Change Healthcare ransomware attack.
As the Change Healthcare attack showed, outages in the hospital and health care industry directly threaten care delivery, patient well-being and providers’ financial solvency. “Every hospital in the country felt the impact, either directly or indirectly,” the American Hospital Association noted in a report on the incident. Along those lines, webinar attendees engaged in poll questions emphasizing that emergency management is no back-office task, but a vital part of patient safety.
Blass and Soto recommended key steps for hospitals, such as maintaining a robust emergency operations plan, conducting detailed risk and vulnerability assessments and ensuring clear communication and command-center activation during disruptions. They also advised implementing tested backups and redundant systems, vendor oversight and continuous training to ensure operations remain resilient in an emergency.
The session recording is available online for viewing. To learn more, contact Blass at [email protected].