A hacked Kaiser Permanente employee’s emails led to breach of 70,000 patient records – By Carly Page (Techcrunch) / June 14, 2022
Kaiser Permanente, the largest nonprofit health plan provider in the United States, has disclosed a data breach that exposed the sensitive health information of almost 70,000 patients.
In a notice to patients on June 3, Kaiser revealed that someone gained access to an employee’s emails at the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington on April 5 that contained protected health information — including patient names, dates of service, medical record numbers, and lab test result information. Financially sensitive information, including social security and credit card numbers, was not exposed by the breach, according to the healthcare provider.
Although the company didn’t reveal the scale of the breach, a separate filing with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that 69,589 individuals were affected.
“We terminated the unauthorized access within hours after it began and promptly commenced an investigation to determine the scope of the incident,” Kaiser said in its notice to patients. “We have determined that protected health information was contained in the emails and, while we have no indication that the information was accessed by the unauthorized party, we are unable to completely rule out the possibility.”
CONTINUE > https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/14/hacked-email-kaiser-permanente-breach/
