Jewish Hospital

A small number of employees of the covered entity (CE), Jewish Hospital, responded to “phishing” emails that appeared legitimate and disclosed the demographic and clinical protected health information (PHI) of approximately 2,992 individuals. The PHI involved in the breach included names, addresses, birthdates, diagnoses, treatments received, health insurance information and the social security numbers of a few individuals. In response to the incident, the CE secured the affected email accounts and arranged for a forensic investigation. While the CE has no evidence that the electronic PHI in the employees’ mailboxes was accessed or otherwise infiltrated by the phishing scheme, it nonetheless sent breach notification letters and offered one year of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services to all potentially affected individuals. It also provided breach notification to HHS and the media and provided substitute notice. Following the breach, the CE deployed anti-phishing software, accelerated its employee phishing education campaign, established a quick reaction team for proactively blocking phishing or other web-based threats, and enhanced its auditing and logging controls. OCR obtained assurances that the corrective actions listed above were completed.