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Westend Dental agrees to pay Indiana $350K and to implement corrective action plan to settle charges of multiple HIPAA violations

Posted on December 31, 2024 by Dissent

TechCrunch recently did its annual write-up of badly handled data security incidents.  The following wasn’t in it but is one of the worst security and privacy failures that I’ve ever read, and that’s saying a lot. This case stems from a ransomware attack by Medusa Locker in October 2020 that is first being seriously addressed now — and not by HHS, but by the Indiana state attorney general’s office.

Inside Indiana Business reports:

An Indianapolis-based dental practice has agreed to pay $350,000 and to shore up its data protection and patient privacy practices following a state investigation into a ransomware attack and unauthorized disclosure of patient information.

In a lawsuit filed Dec. 23 against Westend Dental in federal court, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita alleged that an online attack in October 2020 exposed patients’ protected health information. The attorney general accused Westend Dental of failing to report the breach within time limits and attempting to cover up and deny the incident.

A few of the interesting notes about how the breach was discovered and how it was never investigated to determine who was affected or how many patients were affected:

The state said the precise number of residents affected by the breach was unknown because Westend did not conduct a forensic investigation.

The state’s investigation was prompted by a Westend patient’s consumer complaint regarding an unfulfilled dental records request. During its investigation, the state discovered a ransomware attack on or around Oct. 20, 2020, that exposed patients’ personal and health information, according to the lawsuit. The state said that Westend Dental did not report the breach to the state until Oct. 28, 2022, about two years later. HIPAA, a federal law designed to protect health care privacy, requires notification within 60 days after discovery of an attack.

DataBreaches notes that a check of HHS’s public breach tool does not find any report from Westend Dental.  Perhaps HHS is satisfied with the investigation and consent terms the state has negotiated. Or perhaps HHS still doesn’t even know about the incident?

Not only did Westend Dental not disclose or investigate the breach, but when the state investigated, the entity allegedly denied there had been any breach — even though patient files had been encrypted and were unrecoverable.

Read more at Inside Indiana Business.

The number of federal and state compliance requirements that Westend Dental violated is so shockingly bad that I’ve uploaded the complaint and the proposed text of a consent order for everyone to read. Keep in mind, of course, that Westend denies any wrongdoing and will not be admitting any wrongdoing if there is a settlement.

If the settlement is approved by the court, one of the steps Westend Dental will be taking involves sending individual notification letters to everyone who was a patient of Westend in November 2023 to notify them of the October 2020 incident. Westend will also have a website notice. And there are other significant requirements to get it into compliance with HIPAA’s Privacy and Security Rules.

 

 

 

Category: Commentaries and AnalysesHealth DataMalwareOf Note

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