Update: This was reported to HHS/OCR as impacting 53,173 patients.
Original post:
There were a few press releases about breaches that appeared after 3 pm on the Friday of a three-day holiday weekend. This was one of them:
A recent data security incident affected patients receiving services from Onco360 and CareMed Specialty Pharmacy. On November 14, 2017, suspicious activity involving an employee’s email account was identified. Independent computer forensic experts were engaged to assist with the investigation. On November 30, 2017, the forensic investigation determined that an unauthorized user appeared to have gained access to email accounts of three employees. A detailed review of the impacted e-mail accounts was performed, and on January 8, 2018, it was determined that a limited number of those e-mails may have contained demographic information, medication and clinical information, health insurance information and Social Security numbers of some of the patients receiving services from Onco360 and CareMed Specialty Pharmacy. A very small number of individuals may have had their financial account information impacted as well. All affected individuals were notified of this incident.
Prompt measures were taken to address this incident, including changing email account passwords, providing additional training to employees on recognizing suspicious emails, implementing additional measures to further enhance e-mail security and reporting the incident to law enforcement. Although there is no indication that any of the information has been misused and even if risk of misuse may be low, as a precaution, affected individuals should carefully monitor their credit reports and billing statements for any unauthorized activity in the upcoming months. To help protect from any potential negative consequences from this incident, affected individuals are offered credit monitoring and identity protection services free of charge through ID Experts.
If you have any questions or would like to learn additional information, please call (800) 761-7902, a dedicated call center to answer any questions about the incident. The call center is available to answer questions Monday through Friday, between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. EST. Onco360 and CareMed Specialty Pharmacy are subsidiaries of PharMerica. You may also submit any questions about this incident by mail directed to: Onco360/CareMed Specialty Pharmacy, Compliance Officer, 1901 Campus Place, Suite 100, Louisville, KY 40299.
SOURCE Onco360
The number of affected patients was not disclosed in the release and the incident has not (yet) appeared on HHS’s breach tool.