Healthcare

Healthcare organizations have diverse and complicated security requirements. They must create a safe environment for patients, staff, and visitors while also protecting their digital assets and information systems from compromises that could severely impact their ability to function. Additionally, they must manage often conflicting mandates from accrediting agencies and regulatory bodies, all while striving to provide an open and welcoming healing environment.

Our COSECURE Enterprise Risk Solutions team has significant experience working with healthcare organizations. As a consulting firm, we have worked to help healthcare organizations from top-ranked academic medical centers to major urban medical centers, to local critical access hospitals serving rural populations, and home health organizations with hundreds of remote employees. Each of these environments brings its own unique security challenges that must be addressed through solutions geared to the organization’s environment and business needs. We are here to assist healthcare organizations with developing strategies to protect their people, places, and information.

While each healthcare organization is unique, there are common security risks present across nearly all organizations, and we assist our healthcare clients in addressing the following:

Violence against healthcare staff is at epidemic levels, our teams have worked with healthcare organizations across the United States and internationally to design and build effective and scalable workplace violence prevention and response structures, policies, processes, and training.

While a relatively rare event compared to other types of workplace violence, the impact a shooting or other active threat event can have on an organization and its people cannot be overlooked. Our consultants have experience guiding organizations through developing effective strategies to prevent and more effectively respond to an active shooter on their property.

Healthcare organizations have increasingly been attacked by cyber criminals intent on stealing PHI from their information systems, holding them hostage with ransomware, or simply interrupting their operations with denial of service attacks. Our team and partners provide healthcare organizations with services to assess and build on their existing cybersecurity capabilities.

Increasing violent crime rates in some areas have healthcare organizations facing the challenge of better protecting their patients, employees, and visitors from robberies and other violent acts occurring in their parking lots and other outdoor areas of their campuses. Our consultants, certified in multiple crime prevention methodologies work with organizations to assess and improve their crime prevention efforts through application of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), physical security strategies, and appropriate deployment of security staff.

The costs associated with providing quality patient care are rising faster than reimbursement rates, and many healthcare organizations urgently need to identify and realize financial savings across the board. Our security consultants leverage their expertise to identify unmitigated or inefficiently mitigated risks during assessments. Their independence allows them to recommend the most effective solutions for addressing these deficiencies. A security assessment often finds that the security budget of a healthcare organization is not optimally allocated, and our team can typically make recommendations that reduce overall spending on security while improving the organization’s ability to prevent and respond to incidents.

Not every healthcare organization has the financial resources or even the need to hire a qualified healthcare security expert to manage their physical security, cyber security, and workplace violence prevention programs. COSECURE assists these organizations by providing fractional security management support where a member or members of our consulting team can provide ongoing guidance and assistance to the organization and help drive their security programs forward. For organizations with in-house expertise but may be between leaders for the security function, COSECURE can also provide interim leadership services by one of our experts to assist in making a smooth transition.

Mergers and acquisitions are a reality of life in the healthcare sector. Due diligence is vital during the negotiations leading up to a merger to ensure that there are no unforeseen costs that will need to be accounted for to bring one of the parties’ security posture to a level commensurate to the risk tolerance of the new entity. Failure to do so can result in either the potential for millions of dollars in unbudgeted expenses or accepting significant liability by offering two non-aligned standards of care in protection against security risks. Our team of consultants has worked with organizations through hundreds of organization realignments and can ensure that due diligence related to the security programs is conducted effectively. We also assist after the fact in developing strategic plans for the integration of people, processes, and systems.

Need immediate assistance?

Connect directly with an industry specialist today. Our team is available to meet with you over the phone, through a video conference, or in-person.

Email Drew Neckar, our Healthcare specialist, at dneckar@cosecure.com

Healthcare

While each healthcare organization is unique, there are common security risks present across nearly all organizations, and we assist our healthcare clients in addressing the following:

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