UPGRADE program

UPGRADE for Healthcare Cybersecurity

ARPA-H (the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health), an agency under HHS, announced on May 20th the launch of a new cybersecurity effort aimed at helping IT teams secure and defend hospital and other healthcare networks. The program, Universal PatchinG and Remediation for Autonomous DEfense (or UPGRADE), is receiving over $50M in government funding to counter the increase in cyberattacks and ransomware targeting the healthcare industry.

cyberattack on Ascension Health

Ascension Health Cyberattack Hits Hospitals

Overview of the Ascension Health Cyberattack

In a significant digital security breach, Ascension Health fell victim to a cyberattack on its network systems this week. The US’ largest network of Catholic hospitals has suffered interruptions to daily operations and patient care as a result, with patients checking themselves out to seek healthcare elsewhere.

a hacker like those in the RansomHub cybercrime group

RansomHub and Change Healthcare

Weeks after Change Healthcare apparently paid the BlackCat ransomware gang a $22 million ransom to get back access to its encrypted data, another cybercriminal group called RansomHub claims to be trying to sell the 4TB of data. RansomHub’s April 16th message states that the data for “tens of insurance companies” contains Personal Identifiable Information (PII) such as addresses,

cybersecurity for small practices

Small Practice Cybersecurity

After the Change Healthcare cyberattack, you may be wondering, “How can I protect my small practice from a cybersecurity incident?” Unfortunately, a lot of providers and facilities fail to install proper cybersecurity software and infrastructure, or fall behind in maintaining it. Even more often, we hear practice owners say, “My healthcare practice is small,

Change Healthcare Cyberattack

Change Healthcare Outage: Cybersecurity

This week, Optum, Inc. identified an issue with its Change Healthcare services, an outage that left "some applications" unavailable. This quickly escalated to "enterprise-wide connectivity issues" and a network interruption, which [...]
why should i upgrade my medisoft or lytec

Why Should I Upgrade My MEDISOFT / LYTEC?

We’ve talked before about medical providers and practices continuing to use old versions of their medical billing and electronic health records (EHR) software. Fear of change, an uncertain economy, and [...]
NJ Non-profit Hospitals Get Tax Break

NJ Non-profit Hospitals Get Tax Break

A 2021 law drafted as a compromise between tax-exempt non-profit hospitals and the NJ municipalities in which they’re located is being challenged by a lawsuit. State legislators tried to address the dispute, where billion-dollar hospitals paid little to nothing in property taxes, with the law. A 2015 court ruling found that Morristown Medical Center was liable for taxes as a result of operating in large part as a for-profit organization.