Central Valley Healthcare Breach: Former Physician Steals Thousands of Patient Documents

A former graduate physician at Kern Medical, Central Valley, is currently under investigation following a major data breach affecting thousands of patients. The data breach only came to light when a previous girlfriend of the physician found 4 boxes of documents at their home which she then reported to the local news. These documents contained sensitive and privileged patient information, including social security numbers and phone numbers.

It appears that Kern Medical had no knowledge of this data security violation until the local news organization contacted them. As a result of this, it is not known for how long the Kern Medical employee had been printing documents and removing them from the hospital without authorization. While there is no evidence that the data was passed onto any third party for financial gain, or used for fraudulent purposes, this is a clear breach of healthcare data privacy and compliance regulations.

Unfortunately, Healthcare is one of the sectors most vulnerable to insider data breaches. In Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report*, Healthcare was the only industry in which the insider threat caused more data breaches than external attacks, where 59% of data breaches were associated with employees.

With growing security threats facing Healthcare customers, it is critical for Healthcare providers to ensure they have the right solutions and strategy in place to prevent and detect data breaches. This includes protecting privileged patient data from getting into the wrong hands and ensuring compliance with HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).

Make sure your healthcare prospects and customers know how easy it is for undetected data breaches to happen without the right measures in place. Share this case study to show how a leading healthcare provider protected themselves against data security threats.