Privacy Series: HIPAA Breaches - When It Is, and When It Is Not a Breach
Compliance Perspective: What's New in Healthcare Privacy
Over the course of the past few months, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), both of which are divisions of the U.S. Department of Health and...more
Report on Patient Privacy Volume 22, Number 11. November 2022 - The second largest nonprofit hospital chain in the U.S. has been grappling with an Oct. 3 cybersecurity incident that affected facilities across the country,...more
Cyber-attacks on health care entities are becoming increasingly frequent, and the resulting data breaches are often complex. In the event of a cyber-attack, health care entities and their business associates must adhere to...more
According to the 2022 State of Ransomware Report issued recently by Sophos, it surveyed 5,600 IT professionals from 31 countries, including professionals in the health care sector. Those professionals in the health care...more
HIPAA requires covered entities and business associates to report to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) all breaches of unsecured protected health information when the incident involves fewer than 500 individuals no later than...more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on October 23, 2019, that Jackson Health System (“Jackson”), a not for profit hospital system comprised of six hospitals, urgent care centers, nursing facilities and primary care...more
Consistent with our experience, security firm McAfee has confirmed in a report that ransomware attacks have doubled in 2019. Medical providers have been hit hard this year, and one provider, Wood Ranch Medical, located in...more
As readers of this blog know, data breaches in the health care industry are all too common. Healthcare organizations are an attractive target for hackers because of the nature and amount of personal information that they...more
Cyber-attacks on healthcare data are becoming increasingly common and costly and last week even CMS announced that it had suffered a data breach....more
It is clear that the healthcare industry continues to be targeted with cyber-attacks. In 2018, the 10 largest health care breaches, outlined here, include unauthorized access to protected health information (PHI) through a...more
Medical transcription provider MEDantex has reportedly exposed the protected health information of thousands of patients through its unsecured provider portal, which did not require a password for access....more
The health care industry continues to get hammered by SamSam ransomware attacks, to the point that the Department of Health and Human Services Healthcare Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (HCCIC) has issued...more
Children’s Medical Center of Dallas (Children’s) was hit with a $3.2 million civil penalty from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for failing to take steps to properly protect...more
In a rare move by the OCR, it assessed a $3.2 million fine against Children’s Medical Center of Dallas (Children’s) after it issued a Notice of Proposed Determination against Children’s and Children’s failed to request a...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has vacated a district court's dismissal of a data breach class action filed against Horizon Healthcare Services Inc., in the wake of the 2013 theft of two computer laptops...more
The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services has notified up to 15,000 patients of its psychiatric hospital (New Hampshire Hospital) that their names, addresses, Social Security numbers, Medicaid ID numbers and...more
The NTT Security Q3 Quarterly Threat Intelligence Report states that the healthcare industry is the fifth most targeted industry for ransomware (behind financial services, retail, manufacturing and technology) for all cyber...more
Approximately 300,000 patients of Central Ohio Urology Group have been notified that their protected health information has been stolen and posted online. Although the actual date of the hacking has not been released,...more
The New Jersey Spine Center was hit with a variant of CryptoWall ransomware on July 27, 2016 that encrypted its electronic health record and its backup files. A double whammy....more
Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center (LAC+USC) has notified patients that the protected health information of over 700 patients seen in the LAC+USC neurosurgery clinic was stolen from an employee’s car. The information,...more
MedStar Health Cardiology Associates, (“MedStar Cardiology”) affiliated with MedStar Health, which was recently in the news for a ransomware attack, discovered that an employee sent protected health information of 907...more
SCAN Health Plan of California, SCAN Health Plan Arizona, and VillageHealth are in the process of notifying certain plan members and non-plan members of a breach of protected health information, including names, addresses,...more