April sets record for healthcare breaches

PARCA eNews – May 22, 2019 – Nearly 700,000 healthcare records may have been compromised in 44 data breaches reported to the Office for Civil Rights in April 2019, making the highest total number breaches ever reported in a month since OCR began issuing its breach report in 2014.

The list of breaches from April 1 to April 30 included two with more than 100,000 records compromised including more than 200,000 in a hacking event against Doctors Management of Massachusetts and nearly that same number of records hacked from Centrelake Medical Group, Inc. of California.

Hacking/IT incidents outnumbered unauthorized access with 26 vs 13 with theft, loss and improper disposal listed for the remainder.

The report is compiled by the OCR for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as required by the HITECH Act.

Source: Breach Report Results Office of Civil Rights