Email the cause of Texas hospice breach

A routine internal compliance audit led to the discovery of a potential security breach at Hope Hospice. More than 800 patients were notified of the breach.

The New Braunfels, Texas-based organization learned that an employee had emailed reports of referral and admission activity on an unsecured channel in December and again in February. The data sent in the reports included 818 patient names, referral source, referral and admission dates, insurance information, clinical chart data, county and date of discharge. Social Security numbers, patient dates of birth and addresses were not contained in the report. Due to the number of affected individuals and the agency’s policy against using unsecured channels for communicating patient information, each patient or their next of kin is being notified of the occurrence.

In response to this incident, all staff members have received additional training, and the agency is performing a comprehensive review to further refine its policies and procedures related to patient privacy and security. Steps are also underway to further improve the security of the agency’s operations.