Another business associate under HIPAA has disclosed a breach. You may not recognize their name, but they may handle your medical group’s billing or other functions, so if you get a letter from “MEDNAX,” don’t just assume it’s a scam.
Florida-headquartered MEDNAX Services, Inc provides revenue cycle management and other administrative services to physician groups. According to their notification template, a copy of which was submitted to the California Attorney General’s Office:
On June 19, 2020, MEDNAX discovered that an unauthorized third party gained access to certain Microsoft Office 365-hosted MEDNAX business email accounts through phishing. An investigation revealed that an unauthorized third party had been able to access certain business email accounts between June 17, 2020 and June 22, 2020.
Even though a thorough investigation was conducted, it was not possible to conclusively determine whether personal information was actually accessed by the unauthorized party. Based on the data analysis that was performed and ultimately completed in late November 2020, we were able to determine which individuals may have had personal information in the impacted business email accounts.
The patient information may have included: (1) patient contact information (such as patient name, guarantor name, address, email address, and date of birth); (2) Social Security number, driver’s license number, state identification number, and/ or financial account information; (3) health insurance information (payor name, payor contract dates, policy information including type and deductible amount and subscriber/Medicare/Medicaid number); (4) medical and/or treatment information (dates of service, location, services requested or procedures performed, diagnosis, prescription information, physician names, and Medical Record Numbers); and (5) billing and claims information (invoices, submitted claims and appeals, and patient account identifiers used by your provider). Please note that not all data fields may have been involved for all individuals.
Those potentially affected have been offered identity monitoring services.
This incident does not appear on HHS’s public breach tool yet (unless the physician clients notified HHS under their own name), so we do not currently know how many patients are being notified of this incident.