Recent HIPAA Breaches

The US Department of Health and Human Services maintains a public webpage that lists breaches affecting 500 or more individuals. Here are some extremely alarming facts for the month of July, 2016:

Breaches reported for the month: 26

Total number of affected records: 335,082

Average number of affected records per breach: 12,887

Number of each type of breach:

Hacking/IT Incident: 9
Theft: 6
Unauthorized Access/Disclosure: 11

Location of breach information:

Paper/Films: 5
Digital (email, electronic medical records, laptop, server, etc.): 21

Most disturbing is that these numbers have become fairly typical. Medical information data breaches are an ever-present threat to healthcare providers and patients alike.

You can review the details for yourself here on the government’s webside: https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf

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