Come with me. Imagine you rush to the emergency room, but after five hours, they tell you to find another hospital. Or you check in at your specialist’s office for a chronic condition, only to find they’ve lost your entire medical history. Both of these scenarios just happened.
Yesterday’s cyberattack on one of the largest health systems in the U.S., Ascension, was bad — really bad. Before you say, “Another data breach? So what, Kim?” know that having your records sold on the dark web is the least of your worries.
The hack on Ascension sent its 140 hospitals and 40 senior facilities into full-blown chaos. It took down patient record systems and medication prescribing systems, forcing doctors and nurses to rely on paper charts and handwritten records to keep things running.
One patient, Zackery Lopez, checked himself in at an Ascension-run hospital in Southfield, Michigan. He was suffering from internal bleeding and thinking his cancer had returned. Zackery waited a grueling seven hours before a nurse could help him. As he waited, he saw patients checking themselves out.
When hospital systems get hacked, it’s a matter of life and death. And it’s happening more and more often. Keeping physical records sounds old-school, but if digital systems go down, it could save your life.
I also recommend compiling your full medical records and having a printed copy on hand. If you have an iPhone, you can sync them to your Health app:
Health apps track your steps, heart rate, sleep patterns and more. But they’re capable of so much more. You can add your health information to certain apps to keep all your records in one place and share them with your doctors. You can even track your medication.
Protect your docs: Medical identity theft is scary, and victims often don’t realize something is wrong until it’s too late. Store hard copies of medical records and documents with personal identification information in a safe or lockbox.
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