Information Technology, Health IT

Primary Listings

American Broadband Initiative Milestones Report

How good is broadband internet coverage, across the US?  Read the American Broadband Initiative Milestones Report. While urban populations fare well in access to basic fixed terrestrial (as opposed to mobile) service speeds of 25 MBPS/3Mbps, rural populations often do not. Nearly 1/3 of rural populations, and 35% of people on tribal lands do not have even BASIC land-based broadband available to them. This report lays out a plan to improve services. Published February 2019, by NTIA – the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the federal Commerce Department. While the internet speed minimums are already out of date in terms of being acceptable, the fundamental problem of decent broadband service in rural areas remains. The pandemic and growth of telehealth services raised the profile of the issue in 2020.

Cyber Resiliency – Landscape Analysis for Hospitals – HHS 2023

New report from HHS – Cyber Resiliency Initiative: Landscape Analysis, published April 2023. Report analyzed active cyber threats to hospitals, with an emphasis on those that impact patient care and clinical operations. They examined tactics used by threat actors. Report is 55 pages, with 10 key observations outlined in the executive summary. Glossary of acronyms included in appendix. If you’re interested in exploring further, the American Hospital Assn. will review the Landscape Analysis in a free webinar on July 25, 2023.

Digital Nation Data Explorer

Digital Nation Data Explorer is a useful map of United States showing how people access the internet, and what they use it for. Many questions and measures overall, shown by state. Some health-related questions. Data to November 2021. Provided by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the US Department of Commerce. Published October 2022.

Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices

US Dept. of HHS provides guidance materials on recommended cybersecurity practices to manage threats from cyberattacks and to protect patients. Includes a quarterly newsletter for the health industry, that addresses Defending Against Common Cyber-Attacks (2022).

Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems 2022

HealthCare’s Most Wired hospitals & healthcare systems for 2022 are named at Level 7 to Level 10. Hospital and Ambulatory recognition are separated. Survey by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) asked hospitals, healthcare systems and others to report on how they use information technology. About eight major dimensions of a “digital health check-up” were measured.

Worst Passwords of 2022 and 2023 – Nordpass

Nordpass published its list of the 200 worst passwords used in 2022. The list comes from evaluating exposed  passwords and identifying the most common. As you might imagine, the top three in the United States are guest, 123456 and password. Hard to believe, but people still use these easily-guessable passwords. Many of the 200 could be cracked in less than a second. Very few of the passwords required more than an hour to be cracked. In a separate report, Nordpass identified top passwords in healthcare at big companies. Very common was using a part of the company’s name as one’s password. Another study by Safety Detectives identified most hacked passwords in 2023.

Health Information Technology (AHRQ)

Health Information Technology resources are provided by AHRQ Digital Healthcare Research. See the A-Z section for information on Adverse Events, Bar Coding, Computerized Provider Order Entry, Electronic Health Records, Electronic Medical Records, Electronic Prescribing, Medication Safety, Mobile Device, Remote Patient Monitoring, Secure Messaging, Telehealth, Telemedicine and much more. However, Cybersecurity, Malware and Ransomware are not yet included in this federal government IT resource. Current priorities are Digital Healthcare Equity, Virtual Healthcare, Patient-generated Health Data, Clinical Decision Support, Safety, and Care Transitions. Updated September 2022.

Other Helpful Listings

California Penalties for Hospitals (2022)

Find CA hospitals and long term care facilities (nursing homes) with 2022 penalties for violations or deficiencies that represent an immediate jeopardy to the health and safety of a patient or resident. The annual reports have now been replaced by the State Enforcement Actions Dashboard. Amounts of penalties (which used to be up to $125,000 per incident) are listed by name for 2022 and back to 2015. However, you MUST know the facility license number in order to see the fines. Otherwise, all the facilities are mingled together. In addition to hospitals and nursing homes, penalties for medical information breaches are identified. Almost $5 million in penalties have been given for medical information breaches since 2015. Total amounts for all penalties in 2021 were about $9.5 million. Most of the penalties were given to long term care facilities. Incident summaries do not appear to be available at this site. Regularly updated by the California Dept. of Public Health (cdph).