Incredible tally: Millions of Californians have had medical records breached

San Francisco Business Times by Chris Rauber –

July 8, 2014:

Federal officials say 4.6 million Californians have had their medical data exposed to hackers and other unauthorized viewers since 2009, or roughly 1 in 6.9 of the 32 million Americans whose health data was breached during that period.

Those totals, derived from data collected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, were reported Monday by the California HealthCare Foundation’s Center for Health Reporting, based at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Many of the individual breaches that make up those totals have been reported on, but the cumulative numbers are staggering nonetheless.

Among the biggest breaches since 2009 are several in California, according to the CHCF report, drawing on federal data:

• Health Net Inc., 1.9 million records, January 2011
• Sutter Health, 943,000 records, October 2011
• AHMC Healthcare Inc., 729,000 records, October 2013
• Eisenhower Medical Center, 514,000 records, March 2013

To see other examples of medical data breaches affecting 500 or more people, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services privacy site.

Similar breaches have taken place in recent years at Stanford Hospital & Clinics, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, UCSF Medical Center, John Muir Health and other Bay Area/Northern California health care facilities.