Martin Espinoza reports some additional details on the St. Joseph Health breach reported here a few days ago:
St. Joseph Health mistakenly divulged the private information of 11,800 home health patients — including 1,762 in Sonoma and Napa counties — to an investment firm working on a business proposal for the health system.
Neither financial information nor patient Social Security numbers were compromised, St. Joseph Health said Friday.
The patients, some of whom are members of the St. Joseph Home Care Network, were notified in February that a St. Joseph Health employee accidentally sent a Microsoft Excel file to Cain Brothers, an investment banking firm that specializes in the health care industry.
The employee did not delete the file tab that included identifiable patient information, and the file was not encrypted to render it unusable or unreadable. The data included information such as patient name, patient codes, referral source, referral type, admit date, admission status description, admission disposition description and the medical unit where the patient was treated.
Read more on The Press Democrat.