Back in April 2013, this site noted a breach involving Shands Jacksonville Medical Center. The breach, which involved data theft for a tax refund fraud ring, had been reported to Shands by law enforcement in October 2012, and arrests were made in January 2013. Over 14,000 patients were notified in April after a law enforcement stay on notification was lifted.
Because I recently questioned how OCR responds to insider data theft for tax refund fraud, I was interested to find their summary of how Shands and OCR responded to the breach:
A clinical intern at the covered entity (CE), University of Florida Health Jacksonville (UFHJ) (formerly Shands Jacksonville Medical Center), took photographs of protected health information (PHI) and emailed the PHI to an unauthorized third person for the purpose of filing fraudulent tax returns. The PHI included the names, addresses, social security numbers, dates of birth, and treatment information of 1,025 individuals. Law enforcement agencies that learned of the breach informed the CE and requested delays of breach notification. The CE later provided breach notification to affected individuals, HHS, and the media, and offered affected individuals one year of free identity theft protection. Following the breach, the CE sanctioned two workforce members who had allowed the intern, who was no longer at the CE, to use their credentials to access the electronic medical records in violation of its policies. The CE also retrained workforce members on its privacy policies; increased access restrictions to social security numbers; and ended its clinic-based internships. OCR provided technical assistance and obtained assurances of the CE’s plan to update its breach notification policies and procedures.
So.. what do you think? Was that a strong enough response on OCR’s part? Keeping in mind that Shands did not detect this breach on their own, should OCR’s response have included assurances of more auditing/monitoring of access?