The University of Cincinnati Medical Center suffered data breach which potentially compromised the PHI of 1,064 individuals. The medical center has experienced nine such incidents in past of emailing private patient information to the wrong email addresses.
Affected information includes patient names, dates of birth, medical record numbers, dates of services, physician names, and diagnosis information. UC Health did not report the disclosure of any Social Security numbers
Email and health data breach
or other private financial information. Financial and billing information was not compromised. UC Health have no reason to believe that the information has been misused
The incident happened when the emails intended to employees within the hospital network was inadvertently sent to someone potentially not within the hospital system.
“UC Health takes very seriously our role of safeguarding the personal information of our patients and using it in an appropriate manner and we apologize for any concern or inconvenience this situation may cause,” the hospital said in a statement.
Notification letters to all potentially affected individuals are also sent. UC Officials encourage potentially affected individuals to open a fraud alert on their credit cards and to enlist the services of a credit monitoring agency. UC Health has also created a block on any emails sent to affected domain name in the future.
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