Data Breaches Reported In May Have Doubled Over Previous Year

Sarasota, FL (WorkersCompensation.com) – The number of data breaches reported in the first quarter of 2021 increased 122 percent over the previous year. Two recent incidents involved a large healthcare system in San Diego, and a third party prescription administrator.

Earlier this month, according to a report from The San Diego Union-Tribune, Scripps Health announced that it had experienced a “security breach” on the main network system, and as a result immediately shut down access to all platforms, including the patient portal and scheduling. It wasn’t until last week that Scripps announced that their main website was back up; however, the patient portal is still having issues. Patient care is still continuing, although with some modifications.

In another report from NBC7 San Diego, patient appointments had to be rescheduled as a result of the “security breach” that the California Department of Public Health is calling a ransomware attack. The healthcare group has come under some criticism due to the lack of information available about the incident. In a leaked internal memo released by the news station, Scripps Health CEO Chris Van Gorder stated that he was being limited on what he was allowed to release about the incident.

According to both reports as well as the Scripps information page, the incident is still being investigated, with preventative steps being taken. However, it has not been fully determined if vital patient information has actually been compromised.

On May 5^th, third party prescription administrator CaptureRx filed a report of a hacking incident on its networks that involved 1,656,569 patient records. The breach originally occurred in March, with impacted files that contained patient information such as prescription information, patient name, and date of birth. According to a report from Becker’s Hospital Review, the data breach at the San Antonio based company has impacted 13 healthcare entities across the nation. Walmart is listed as one of the pharmacies that has been impacted according to the Becker’s report; however, the number of records at this time is unknown. According to the data on the U.S. Department of Health Breach Portal, the company has not filed an official breach report at this time.

Since the first of May, there have been a total of 56 data breaches reported by healthcare providers, averaging out to 2.6 incidents reported per day, and equating to double the amount of breaches reported in the full month of May last year. In April, the total number of breaches reported totaled 64, averaging out to 2.1 incidents report per day.

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