Medical City parent company reveals patient data breach affecting 11 million
DALLAS-FORT WORTH (CBSNewsTexas.com) — Medical City Healthcare's parent company said it suffered a recent data breach, affecting the personal information of about 11 million patients.
HCA Healthcare said a list of patient information was made available by an unknown and unauthorized party on an online forum.
The breached information does not include clinical information (such as treatment, diagnosis, or condition), payment information, or sensitive information like passwords, driver's licenses or social security numbers.
HCA Healthcare said it confirmed the list contains patient names, email addresses and phone numbers, birth dates and information about medical appointments.
"Patients' names, their location, telephone number, date of birth and gender...that gives all the information for a hacker used to steal identities," security consultant Andrew Sternke said.
He said hackers can sell that data to others to acquire medical services.
For seven months, Josh Arredondo has been spending his days at Medical City Dallas Hospital focused on getting his one-year-old daughter Mia the help she needs to recover from a serious heart condition.
"Anytime your child's life is on the line, you're obviously very concerned very worried," Arredondo said, now having to worry about possibly being a victim of the data breach.
The incident was reported to law enforcement and Medical City's parent company retained third-party forensic and threat intelligence advisors. The company said it disabled user access to the storage location as an immediate containment measure and will "contact any impacted patients to provide additional information and support, in accordance with its legal and regulatory obligations, and will offer credit monitoring and identity protection services, where appropriate."
Medical City has six hospitals, four off-campus emergency rooms, and 12 ambulatory surgery centers with approximately 160,000 patient admissions, 1.3 million outpatient visits and 582,000 ER visits.
More information on HCA Healthcare's patient privacy can be found by clicking here.