The following data breaches have been reported on Becker's Hospital Review in the past three weeks.
1. Centene, a St. Louis-based payer, is searching for six missing hard drives that contain protected health information of approximately 950,000 individuals.
2. Michael Benjamin, MD, a physician specializing in hematology and oncology in California, reported a breach affecting 1,300 patients after paper patient charts were stolen from the office.
3. Anchorage-based Alaska Orthopedic Specialists notified patients of a breach after a former employee had sent copies of patient information to the employee's personal email account.
4. An unauthorized party gained access to an employee's credentials at Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital, possibly compromising the protected health information of 1,009 individuals.
5. St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh, N.Y., reported a data breach after discovering a thumb drive potentially containing protected health information was stolen.
6. MaineGeneral Health updated a breach notification from December indicating the protected health information and Social Security numbers of an additional 2,000 people may have been compromised, bringing the total number of affected individuals to 120,000. MaineGeneral initially reported the breach after the FBI notified the health system that some of its data was found on an external website.
7. New West Health Services, a health plan doing business as New West Medicare, reported a breach after an off-site computer containing personal health information of 25,000 New West customers was stolen.
8. Blue Shield of California notified 21,000 individuals whose personal information was compromised during a data breach that came to the organization’s attention in December. Those who may have been affected enrolled between October 2013 and December 2015.
9. Hillsides, a child welfare agency in Pasadena, Calif., reported a data breach after discovering an employee had sent internal files with personally identifiable information and protected health information of 502 clients and 468 employees to a personal email address.
10. Indiana University Health Arnett Hospital in Lafayette learned Nov. 20 that an unencrypted flash drive was missing from its emergency department. Spreadsheets on the flash drive contained information of more than 29,000 patients.
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