CHI Franciscan Health Highline Medical Center (Highline) recently suffered data breach. Facility notified certain patients.
Vendor R-C Healthcare Management (R-C Healthcare) previously worked with Highline. In 2014, the medical center was acquired by CHI. R-C Healthcare alerted Highline that files with patient information had been mistakenly been made accessible online.
The affected files were secured till June 13. Affected information included patient names, dates of service, health insurance information and Social Security numbers. According to the reports, potentially affected patients include those involved in account reporting functions from 1993 to 1994 and then from 2008 to 2013. 
“We take our responsibility to protect patient privacy very seriously and have taken immediate responsive action,” Highline explained. “We work to continually improve our policies, processes and educational offerings to ensure our patients receive the benefit of proven information security and confidentiality practices.”
Facility has no information of the data being “accessed, viewed, acquired or otherwise compromised by any unauthorized third party,” it is still offering free credit monitoring services to those who were possibly affected.
As per the OCR data breach reporting tool, 18,399 individuals’ information was made online in the incident.
“We deeply regret any concern this may cause our patients. We take our responsibility to protect patient privacy very seriously and have taken immediate responsive action. We work to continually improve our policies, processes and educational offerings to ensure our patients receive the benefit of proven information security and confidentiality practices.”
As mentioned on the website:
The seeds for CHI Franciscan Health were planted in 1891, when the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia established St. Joseph Hospital, now known as St. Joseph Medical Center, in Tacoma. Over the years, our health care ministry has grown with the enduring goal of fulfilling the spiritual, emotional and physical needs of the people we serve.
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