On February 21, 2019, UConn Health submitted a HIPAA Email Breach to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Located in Farmington, CT, the email breach potentially affected 326,629 individuals’ protected health information. United Hospital District is classified as a Healthcare Provider.
According to a notice on UConn Health's website: UConn Health recently learned that an unauthorized third party illegally accessed a limited number of employee email accounts. Upon learning of the incident, we immediately took action, including securing the impacted accounts to prevent further unauthorized access and confirming the security of our email system. We also notified law enforcement and retained a leading forensic security firm to investigate and conduct a comprehensive search for any personal information in the impacted email accounts. On December 24, 2018, we determined that the accounts contained some personal information, including some individuals’ names, dates of birth, addresses and limited medical information, such as billing and appointment information. The accounts also contained the Social Security numbers of some individuals. At this point, we are not aware of any fraud or identity theft to any individual as a result of this incident, and do not know if any personal information was ever viewed or acquired by the unauthorized party. Nevertheless, because we cannot isolate exactly what, if any, information may have been accessed, we notified individuals whose information was in the impacted accounts. The incident had no impact on our computer networks or electronic medical record systems.
View the full notice here.
HHS Wall of Shame
The HHS Wall of Shame is a website under the jurisdiction of HHS that lists all HIPAA breaches reported within the last 24 months. The Wall of Shame displays breaches that are currently under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights. As part of section 13402(e)(4) of the HITECH Act, the HHS Secretary must post a list of breaches of unsecured protected health information affecting 500 or more individuals.
HIPAA Breach Report
The Paubox HIPAA Breach Report analyzes breaches that affected 500 or more individuals as reported in the HHS Wall of Shame.
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