St. Louis-based Ascension said more than 18,000 patients at hospitals in Texas may have had their data compromised in a recent breach.
The health system said June 6 that a third-party website manager, Vertex, experienced a data security incident in March and that information on Ascension legacy websites — Providence.net, Seton.net and DellChildrens.net — was breached, JD Supra reported. Ascension told the HHS Office of Civil Rights that included data from 17,191 patients at Austin-based Ascension Seton and 1,415 from Waco-based Ascension Providence.
Vertex discovered that the hacker may have encrypted certain files, some of which contained confidential patient data, according to JD Supra. It may have included names, addresses, Social Security numbers, emails, phone numbers and insurance information.