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Stolen! Imaging
Center Break-in Tests System Thieves broke in and made off with Willamette Open Imaging’s hardware, but not their system, which was stored safely off site. Willamette Open Imaging LLC in Salem, Ore., opened in April. A little more than one month later, it was robbed. Burglars broke down a back door and helped themselves to more than $45,000 worth of equipment. The imaging facility’s receptionist arrived for work and found its computers and $25,000 thermal printer gone and the office in shambles. “She immediately dialed 9-1-1 and left the building until the police arrived,” says Lisa Lewis, BS, RT(R)(CT)(MR)(M), facility administrator. The theft set the facility back. “Once we were robbed, we had to stop marketing,” Lewis says. “We had to replace the computers and the printer and that took us a little time.” Data Not Compromised Lewis says when she arrived the morning after the robbery, her first thought was, “Thank God we have SourceRad because nothing was compromised. With SourceRad, nothing is saved on site or on the [facility’s] hard drive.” The Web-based system meant that while the burglars had the facility’s hard drives and backup terminals, they did not have access to their patients’ medical or billing records. Also, says Seth Koeppel, vice president of radiology sales for Source Medical, the new features of the Web-based RIS protected privacy and avoided potential HIPAA violations because no patient data was lost or compromised. All the facility needed was to replace its computer terminals and printer and it would be back in business, Koeppel says. “All we had to do was ship out replacement hardware and so we called Dell and Dell overnighted computers to them and they were back in business. The gap in business was less than 48 hours.” Computers are increasingly becoming a target for burglars. More than 600,000 notebooks were stolen in 2003, according to Safeware Insurance, which sells computer insurance. The number increased 25% to 750,000 in 2004, according to Absolute Software, a maker of tools to retrieve lost or stolen laptops. It made headlines across the country in May when a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs employee took home his laptop containing personal information about more than 26 million veterans and it was stolen. (Police later captured two people and charged them with the theft.) Healthcare Target • In June, a laptop computer was stolen from a Cumberland County, N.C., emergency medical services truck that contained records of 24,350 patients of the Cape Fear Valley Health System. • In March, thieves stole laptops containing records from 122 hospice and home care patients in Snohomish County, Wash. It was the second time in one year the Providence Health System was a victim of computer theft. • In November, a laptop containing insurance claims of nearly 4,000 patients of The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston was stolen. The theft occurred at the home of a PricewaterhouseCoopers employee reviewing the patient claims. Richard J. Croteau, MD, executive director for patient safety initiatives at the Joint Commission International Center for Patient Safety in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., says, “There is no question that there are risks associated with keeping personal health information on laptops which might be stolen.” Lewis says the neighborhood where her facility is located is “not the nicest” and many businesses in the area had been hit before Willamette. Authorities investigating the crime told her the thieves probably took the equipment and pawned it to support their drug habits. “The state of Oregon has a problem with methamphetamine usage,” she says, “and the police officers felt it was a crime of opportunity.” Lewis has found most healthcare providers don’t realize their vulnerability. Shortly after the incident, she called on a doctor’s office to market Willamette Open Imaging’s services. When Lewis mentioned the robbery, the office manager spun around and grabbed his 200-gigabyte hard drive from the bookshelf behind him and said, “Maybe I should take this home.” The hard drive contained the office’s backup files. Lewis was stunned. Koeppel says what happened at Willamette could happen anywhere. Theft is not the only threat. Last year, he says, Source Medical had a large client in New Orleans that used its RIS but not its PACS. “Hurricane Katrina came along and their servers were floating down the street.” Within a few days, the client set up an office in Georgia and was able to recover its patient information because it had been stored securely on the Web. Had the RIS been on its computers, it would not have been able to recover nearly as easily, if at all, Koeppel says. A Web-based Benefit “The system’s fully hosted Application Service Provider platform reduces the cost and burden associated with deploying and maintaining hardware, software, security, and support infrastructure,” he says. Basing cost on usage makes the system affordable for even smaller facilities such as Willamette, Koeppel says. In the past, he says, PACS and RIS would have been somewhat cost-prohibitive for much of the market. “What we’ve done is build a fully integrated solution that is affordable and scalable for small providers.” Lewis says the Web-based system was not only a blessing during its crisis, but its radiologist is in Portland, approximately 45 minutes from Salem, and she can access the studies from her location. “She logs on at work and she can pull up the data she needs that way,” Lewis says. That was one of the key reasons Willamette chose SourceRad,
Lewis says. “We liked that we didn’t have to have special
servers or anything like that for her to access the studies.” The facility has a T-1 line so the speed for sending and retrieving data is not an issue, Lewis says. Lewis, who has worked at other facilities, says that from her perspective, it is no different storing the data via the Web than storing it on a local server. With SourceRad, Lewis says, the staff can view images, orders, and tech notes and dictate, edit, electronically sign, and distribute medical reports from a single worklist. “You wouldn’t know that our data is stored on the Web vs. servers,” Lewis says. “The only way you could tell is if you were told.” The security of sending personal information and medical reports over the Internet is not a concern, Koeppel says. “I would challenge anybody that our HIPAA standards and protocols are better than you can do on a local basis.” Also, he says, by sharing an infrastructure, the system provides support and security 24/7. For an individual provider to have as much duplication as Source Medical can provide, “it would break the bank,” Koeppel says. But by sharing the monitoring software, “it becomes much more affordable.” Beta Site Willamette Open Imaging opened in a facility that had been an MRI center but was closed for approximately two years. Its owner, accountant John Bennett, knew the previous facility had been successful and decided to reopen in the same location because the area lacked a magnet. Its film printer was the most valuable piece of equipment taken, Lewis says. It prints MRI images onto x-ray film. Replacing the printer was the most time-consuming part of its recovery effort after the burglary, she says. Since the burglary, Lewis says, the landlords have also improved security in and around the building—with lights and locks and a locked fence to prevent access to the alley where the burglars entered. — Beth W. Orenstein is a freelance medical
writer and a regular contributor to Radiology Today.
She writes from her home in Northampton, Pa.
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