HCA Healthcare this week saidit was the target of a major data breach, with about 11 million patients and 1,400 facilities in 20 states, including Florida.
Some patient information was made available for sale by an “unknown and unauthorized party” on an online forum. That included patient name, city, state, ZIP code, phone number, birth date, gender, service date, location and appointment date.
The list did not include patient clinical information, credit card or account numbers, passwords, driver’s licenses or social security numbers, HCA said.
“While our investigation is ongoing, the company has not identified evidence of any malicious activity on HCA Healthcare networks or systems related to this incident,” the statement said.
However, CNBC reported that the hackers provided DataBreaches.net with a sample set of data about a patient’s “low risk” lung cancer assessment.
HCA Healthcare is the parent company of HCA Florida, which runs more than 100 hospitals and health clinics in Florida that were impacted by the data breach.
The company said the "serious data breach" apparently occurred at external storage location used to automate the formatting of email messages.
HCA said the stolen list contains information used for email messages, “such as reminders that patients may wish to schedule an appointment” and education on health care programs and services.
HCA did not say when the hack occurred but that it reported the incident to law enforcement and retained third-party “forensic and threat intelligence advisors.”
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