WRAL reports that the North Carolina Department of Health & Human Services has had a second breach involving hundreds of Medicaid patients. It was the second time in as many months that an employee error involving unencrypted e-mail resulted in exposure of patient information. This time, the breach reportedly affected 524 patients.
Officials said they have installed software to prevent similar data breaches in the future. They also said they have notified the affected patients, but they don’t believe the personal information fell into the wrong hands.
Both incidents involved a staffer sending unencrypted emails to local health departments containing patients’ names, addresses, Medicaid recipient ID numbers, genders, ethnicity, race, insurance information and provider names.
Read more on WRAL.