Val Verde Regional Medical Center recently announced data breach when unsecured PHI in an email was discovered.
“On or about August 9, 2015, an independent healthcare provider downloaded unsecured protected health information and emailed it to a personal account without encryption protection,” explained the press release. “In addition, the independent contractor was not authorized to access some of the protect[ed] health information.”
Val Verde Regional Medical Center came to know about health data breach on December 8, 2015. Affected patient information in the email included names, addresses, phone numbers, medical record numbers, and visit numbers.
According to the OCR data breach portal, two thousand individuals were affected by the incident. Val Verde Regional Medical Center launched an investigation. It also notified patients who were possibly affected by the event.
Internal audit and improved security measures to the hospital’s HIPAA security program is being undertaken by the hospital.
Val Verde Medical Center believes that there have been no reports of improper use of PHI, patient medical histories, or Social Security numbers by unauthorized individuals. It has encouraged all potentially affected patients to monitor credit reports for suspicious activity.
Users are advised to take necessary steps.They are advised to obtain credit reports from one or more of the major credit reporting agencies to monitor financial accounts for unauthorized activity. Consumers are entitled to get a free copy of their credit report from each of the major nationwide credit reporting companies once every 12 months. They need to request the same as per the federal law.
Del Rio and surrounding communities received services from Val Verde Regional Medical Center since 1959. Val Verde Regional Medical Center considers the privacy of patients as a high priority task. It is guided by the mission to improve the health of the people in the communities served.
Alertsec Xpress is the full disk encryption service that delivers a mobile data protection system for all information stored on laptops used throughout your organization.