Tech

Illustration: Brittany Holloway-Brown, Photos: Adobe Stock

Cyberattacks are never good news. But they can be particularly devastating to medical service providers and suppliers, and they’re becoming more common.

Healthcare data breaches have trended up since the federal government began posting public summaries in 2009, according to an analysis by news outlet the HIPAA Journal.

These attacks can expose people’s personal information and shut down or delay vital healthcare services. An attack on the UK’s National Health Service in 2024 caused delays that reportedly contributed to a patient’s death.

The motives for a cyberattack are as varied as their methods. They involve AI tools like targeted voice phishing and malware to achieve goals ranging from revenge to extortion.

One cybercrime group, ShinyHunters, has claimed to have stolen millions of records to obtain ransoms from medical device makers Medtronic, Abbott, and Baxter along with pharmaceutical supplier McKesson. The Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC), a cybersecurity nonprofit, posted an urgent threat alert about the group on Aug. 28.

To find out more about what’s at stake and how healthcare organizations can avoid becoming victims, we talked with Errol Weiss, Health-ISAC’s chief security officer. Weiss joined Health-ISAC in 2019 and has previously worked at Bank of America, Citigroup, and the National Security Agency.

Read the interview here.—CC

      

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Direct care

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We’ll stress you out with stats for a second, if you don’t mind: Health benefit costs are expected to climb 8.2% next year, the highest increase since 2003, according to a recent survey from professional services firm Marsh.

If that rise occurs, it would mark the fifth consecutive year of climbing healthcare benefit costs.

So…good. We’re all stress-y. And that’s probably justified, Antonio Cueto, CFO of Judi Health, a pharmacy and medical benefit management platform, told CFO Brew.

“You have double-digit growth in cost of care year over year, and you know, it’s compounding,” Cueto said. “Even the biggest employers in the country, with strong balance sheets and P&Ls, can’t afford it anymore.”What’s the answer for forward-thinking CFOs who want to opt out of the annual health benefits cost shocks? “It’s a moment in time when we need to reimagine how we think about benefits,” Cueto said. “It used to be an HR issue. Now it’s a boardroom issue.”

Keep reading on CFO Brew.—NP

      

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Hospitals

University of California, Irvine Health

Nearly half of all US hospitals no longer have obstetric services.

From 2010 to 2024, 718 US hospitals lost labor and delivery services, according to a recent overview from the University of Minnesota’s Rural Health Research Center. In that time frame, the percentage of hospitals without obstetric units increased from 34.8% to 49.1%, the researchers found.

Those numbers may get worse in the face of Medicaid cuts included in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill. Medicaid paid for 41% of births in 2023, according to data from health policy research firm KFF. There are about 3.6 million births in the US annually. Because of this, “large cuts to Medicaid will put significant strain on maternity care,” Adam Searing, an associate professor of the practice at Georgetown University, wrote in a blog post.

Uneven impact. A related study from the University of Minnesota, published Sept. 11 in JAMA Health Forum, found that low birth volume, unprofitability, for-profit status, and distance to another hospital with obstetric services were all factors that contributed to obstetric unit closures between 2010 and 2023.

Of the 1,126 rural hospitals with obstetric units in 2010, 239 hospitals lost their obstetric unit and 42 hospitals shut down entirely by 2023. For the 1,982 urban hospitals, 250 lost their obstetric unit and 92 hospitals closed, the study found.

Keep reading here.—MA

      

vital signs

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: 792. That’s how many measles cases have been confirmed in Pennsylvania this year. (PennLive)

Quote: “That really is quite an explosion.”—Ayesha Appa, SVP of medical affairs at telehealth addiction treatment clinic Boulder Care, on the spike in patients using kratom products (Stat)

Read: Healthcare workers are going without health insurance. (the Washington Post)

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