Michigan AG Office Helps Craft FCC Advisory Committee's Best-Practices Report to Stop Robocalls from Disrupting Hospitals  

Hospitals currently face many unlawful calling activities, including telephone denial-of-service attacks, targeted social engineering and phishing schemes.  These calls can disrupt critical communications, threaten patients’ privacy, facilitate unauthorized access to prescription drugs, and divert important hospital resources. 

Recognizing that efforts made by a single entity will not adequately protect hospitals from illegal robocalls, the HRPG recommendations focus on collective efforts and encourage a coordinated response among hospitals, phone companies, telecom carriers and government agencies to mitigate the impact of these calls.  Some of the best practices in the report include: 

• Telecom carriers should analyze, identify and monitor traffic on their network for patterns consistent with unlawful robocalls, and establish a method to ensure hospitals can quickly notify the provider about unlawful robocalls that interfere with patient care and hospital operations. 
• Hospitals should educate staff and raise awareness of robocall incidents through staff training and preparing robocall incident response plans, as well as evaluate robocall events to capture relevant information about calling activity. 
• Federal and state governments should create and implement policies to facilitate the telecom industry’s ability to prevent unlawful robocalls from reaching hospitals and improve communication methods among hospitals and law enforcement agencies.