Sacred Heart Health System, Inc

On February 16, 2016, the American College of Cardiology Foundation, a business associate (BA), notified the covered entity (CE), Sacred Heart Health System, Inc., that some of its protected health information (PHI) had been inadvertently transferred to a testing environment made accessible to four vendors who were working with a software developer of the BA. The CE conducted an internal investigation and determined that the names, dates of birth, social security numbers, and internal patient identification numbers for 532 individuals had been exposed as a result of the incident. The CE immediately terminated access to the database containing the PHI, and obtained assurances from the vendors and software developer that the PHI had not been retained, or made accessible to any other unauthorized individuals. In response to the breach, the CE reviewed its policies and procedures, retrained its staff. The BA revised its policies and procedures for transferring data and added additional safeguard controls to ensure the security of PHI. Additionally, the CE provided breach notification to HHS, to the affected individuals, to the media, and posted a notice on its website. OCR obtained assurances that the CE and BA implemented the corrective actions listed above.