We’ve seen a record number of incidents reported in the first quarter of 2019, and it’s not getting any better in the healthcare sector.
Whether you use HHS’s public breach tool, as Modern Healthcare does, or the system DataBreaches.net and Protenus, Inc. use to track U.S. breaches involving medical or health data, April set a new record for number of breaches or incidents disclosed during the month.
Using HHS’s breach tool, Modern Healthcare notes that there were 42 breaches each impacting or potentially impacting more than 500 patients that were reported to the federal regulator last month. Those breaches, they report, affected 686,953 people.
Although DataBreaches.net is still compiling and analyzing incidents disclosed in April, so far, we have 55 incidents, for which we have numbers on 49 50 incidents. Those 50 incidents affected 962,400 2,262,400 people. The number affected is nowhere near any kind of record high, but the number of incidents recorded is approximately 25% higher than monthly figures for the first quarter of this year, and a tad higher than some monthly figures from 2017, where we occasionally saw our frequency counter hit 50 or above.