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Healthcare Management vocabulary · Medical Records and Health Information

Data breach

Meaning in healthcare management, with examples

nounCommon term

In healthcare management, data breach means: An incident in which personal data, such as patient records, is lost, stolen, shared with the wrong person or accessed without permission.

In Turkish: veri ihlali, veri sızıntısı

How it is used

Can be caused by hackers, a lost laptop or a simple email sent to the wrong address. Hospitals must report serious breaches to the data protection authority within a legal time limit, such as 72 hours under the GDPR in the EU and the UK.

Example sentences

  1. Sending test results to the wrong patient counts as a data breach.

  2. After the data breach, every member of staff had to repeat their data protection training.

Common collocations

  • report a data breach
  • serious data breach
  • data breach notification
  • prevent a data breach
  • confidentialityThe duty to keep patients' personal and medical information private and to share it only with people who need it for their care or have legal permission.
  • electronic health recordA digital version of a patient's health record that authorised staff can view and update, and that can often be shared between departments and providers.
  • hospital information systemThe integrated software a hospital uses to manage patient registration, appointments, clinical records, orders, billing and stock.
  • complianceActing in line with laws, regulations, standards and internal policies, and the work of checking and proving that this happens.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Medical Records and Health Information

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This page explains English vocabulary for learners. It is not medical advice.