A Pennsylvania healthcare service suffers data breach.
A Pennsylvania healthcare service suffered data breach incident which may led to personal health information (PHI) misuse. According to the reports, computer server containing patient information for Dr. Barry Snyder was breached after a third party element accessed information wrongly.
“Our forensics experts cannot verify with 100 percent certainty that the data security event occurred, but Penn Highlands Brookville is providing notice to affected patients so that they may take steps to protect their identity if they feel it is necessary,” the release said.
The affected information includes patients’ names, addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, insurance information, medical information and gender.
Healthcare swung into action and hired national security and computer forensics experts to thoroughly investigate the incident. It also provided toll free number for patients to call for more information.
According to the press release:
Penn Highlands Brookville encourages its patients to remain vigilant by reviewing account statements for any unusual activity, notifying their credit card companies, and monitoring their credit reports. Under U.S. law, individuals are entitled to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit bureaus.
At no charge, you can also have these credit bureaus place a “fraud alert” on their files that alerts creditors to take additional steps to verify their identity prior to granting credit in their names. Please note, however, that because it tells creditors to follow certain procedures to protect the individual’s credit, it may also delay the ability to obtain credit while the agency verifies the individual’s identity. As soon as one credit bureau confirms an individual’s fraud alert, the others are notified to place fraud alerts on that individual’s file.
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