Blue Shield of California

The business associate (BA), Blue Shield of California, reported that Google analytics was configured on its website in such a way that protected health information (PHI) may have been transmitted to Google. This potentially affected 4,700,000 individuals. The PHI involved included clinical, demographic, and financial information. The BA notified HHS, the affected individuals, the media, and provided substitute notice on its website. In response to the breach, the BA implemented additional administrative safeguards to better protect PHI and discontinued the use of tracking technologies on authenticated pages without a business associate agreement in place.