Two breaches that were first reported to HHS in November have now been more fully disclosed. Both of the following breaches were first reported to HHS in November as impacting 500 or 501 patients — entries that this site usually suspects are just “markers” for “we have no idea yet how many were impacted.”
Anne Arundel Medical Center (Maryland, phishing attack)
Zeke Hartner reports:
Luminis Health, the owners of Anne Arundel Medical Center in Maryland, announced Thursday that its email system was accessed by an unauthorized party, and some patient information could have been exposed during the breach.
The health company said it became aware of the breach within its employee email system on Sept. 3, 2021, and took steps to secure the impacted email accounts.
They then hired a computer forensics firm to assist in an investigation into the incident. That investigation found that an unauthorized person accessed employee email accounts between Aug. 26 and Sept. 14.
Read more at WTOP.
Marietta Area Health Care dba Memorial Health System (Ohio, ransomware)
Evan Bevins reports:
Personal information for more than 200,000 people may have been accessible during a cyber attack on Memorial Health System last year, although officials say there is no indication any identity theft or unauthorized use of the data occurred.
Patients from Memorial whose personal health information, Social Security number, account number or date of birth could have been accessed recently received letters notifying them of the situation. The letter says the recipient’s information was present in systems that were accessed by an “unauthorized actor” around July 10 through Aug. 15.
Read more at News & Sentinel.
Not everyone impacted by the Anne Arundel incident has been sent letters yet — and may not get them for weeks — even though the breach was first discovered on September 3.
The Memorial Health breach was first detected in August. The system gives a chronology of its discovery and investigation, but the bottom line is that neither of these entities notified affected patients “no later than 60 calendar days” from when the breaches were discovered.
What is HHS going to do about this repeated problem of notifications taking many months following initial discovery of a breach? Anne Arundel discovered a problem on September 3. They appear to have stopped the access by September 14. Four months later, some patients still haven’t been notified.
At some point, we should see an update on the number of patients impacted by the Anne Arundel incident. The Memorial Health incident impacted 216,478 patients.