Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, a part of Trinity Health, recently notified patients of an October data breach that exposed patients' protected health information.
Five details:
- An unauthorized individual gained access to an employee email account between Oct. 29 and 31. The hospital became aware of the suspicious activity Oct. 31 and secured the account immediately, according to a post on Loyola's website.
- Loyola reported the incident to HHS' data breach portal Dec. 30; the incident exposed the protected health information of 16,934 individuals.
- The exposed information included patients' full names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, email addresses, medical record numbers, conditions, medications, test results, medical facilities, types of service and some health plan information.
- The hospital said it was unable to determine which, if any, emails were viewed by the unauthorized individual.
- Loyola offered affected patients one year of free credit monitoring and dark web monitoring.