Becker's Hospital Review

56 CIO / HEALTH IT Kaiser terminates employee that inappropriately accessed 2,756 patients' records over 8 years By Laura Dyrda K aiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States reported an em- ployee inappropriately accessed members' radiology records from 2012 to 2020. "We learned that a former employee inappropriately accessed the radiology re- cords of members who were patients in our radiology departments. Based on an investigation, we determined that the former employee's access was outside the scope of her job functions," the system said in a statement to Becker's. The health system reported the breach to HHS on May 22 and began notifying the 2,756 affected patients. Kaiser Permanente said in the statement that there is no evidence that the information was used to commit fraud or other criminal activities. "When we learned about the inappropriate access in late March, the former em- ployee, a radiology department imaging technician, was immediately placed on administrative leave while an investigation was conducted. The employee has now been terminated," the health system's statement read. Any members with questions or concerns should contact the system's member services department at 1-800-777-7904. Kaiser Permanente is based in Oakland, Calif., and includes 39 hospitals as well as 714 medical offices. The system has 12.4 million members. n UCSF pays $1M+ ransom to unlock medical school's computer systems By Jackie Drees U niversity of California San Francisco confirmed that it paid $1.14 mil- lion to hackers after a June 1 ransomware attack on its medical school's computer servers. UCSF's IT team discovered the ransomware attack on June 3 and was able to partially stop it, but the hackers managed to encrypt some of the medical school's servers, leaving them temporarily inaccessible. "The data that was encrypted is important to some of the academic work we pur- sue as a university serving the public good," UCSF said in a statement published on its website. "We therefore made the difficult decision to pay some portion of the ransom, approximately $1.14 million, to the individuals behind the malware attack in exchange for a tool to unlock the encrypted data and the return of the data they obtained." UCSF is working with a cybersecurity consultant and outside experts to inves- tigate the security incident and increase the strength of its IT system security. The university said it expects to fully restore the affected servers "soon," and it does not believe patient medical records were exposed, according to the June 26 news release. n Cerner to cut 100 positions By Jackie Drees C erner said June 23 it would eliminate 100 jobs as part of its third round of layoffs since September 2019, The Kansas City Star reported. As part of its ongoing effort to curb costs and increase operating margins, the Kansas City-based EHR vendor issued two rounds of layoffs in Sep- tember and November, affecting 386 employees collectively. "As mentioned in previous earnings calls, Cerner continues to identify organizational efficiencies as we im- plement our new operating model," a company spokesperson said in a June 23 statement emailed to Becker's Hospital Review. "Part of that strategy includes a realignment of resources focused on key growth areas across the company." Cerner CEO Brent Shafer in January 2019 announced the company's new operating model, pivoting Cerner's fo- cus from EHRs to a platform organi- zation. e company has since trans- formed its business strategy to expand its focus on client experience as EHRs move out of the era of adoption to system optimization. e third round of layoffs at the global company mainly affected employees in the Kansas City area across mul- tiple departments, according to the report. However, Cerner plans to hire 5,000 new employees by the end of the year, and workers who were notified on June 23 of layoffs are eligible to apply for the upcoming positions, the spokesperson said. For the first quarter of 2020, Cerner posted $1.41 billion in revenue, up 2 percent from the year prior. e reve- nue was slightly below the company's expectations due to negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, compa- ny executives said during an April 28 earnings call. n

• Cover