As required by the HITECH Act of 2009, hospitals and healthcare organizations must report data breaches affecting more than 500 people to HHS in a database that is now known as the "Wall of Shame."
Here are the five biggest data breaches of 2014, reported and hosted on the Wall of Shame:
1. Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems reported a breach affecting 4.5 million patients after discovering hackers had accessed their servers between April and June 2014. The breach was reported in August.
2. In October, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission reported a data breach affecting 2 million patients. The department had ended its contract with Xerox, and Xerox allegedly refused to return the data to the department or tell the department about the security of how and where the information is being stored. Texas HHSC filed a lawsuit against the vendor.
3. The patient records of more than 342,000 patients were compromised after eight unencrypted desktop computers were stolen from Sutherland Healthcare Solutions, a vendor which handled billing and collections for the Los Angeles County's Department of Health Services and Department of Public Health.
4. Brentwood, Tenn.-based Touchstone Medical Imaging notified more than 307,000 patients that their billing information may have been temporarily available on the Internet after discovering a folder with information from radiology procedures was available online.
5. The Indian Health Service of Maryland reported a physician employed under contract with the IHS improperly accessed the health information of patients from three IHS facilities. According to HHS, 214,000 individuals were affected.
More articles on data breaches:
Healthcare led industries in 2014 data breaches
10 recent data breaches
Target ruled negligent for massive holiday data breach: What does this mean for data breach precedent?