NY breach impacts 90K

Almost 90,000 patients have been notified that their data may have been compromised after a former New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. employee improperly accessed and transmitted files containing protected health information (PHI).

A former employee at HHC Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx sent files with PHI to her personal email account and new work email account. The organization learned of the breach through its information governance and security program that monitors and detects email communications that contain PHI and other confidential information sent from HHC's network without authorization, according to an HHC statement.

PHI at risk includes patient names, addresses, birth dates, telephone numbers, medical record numbers, treatment dates, types of services, limited sensitive health information and some health insurance identification including Social Security numbers.

The organization has no evidence any files were accessed by anyone other than the former employee, and there is no evidence the information was misused, according to the statement, but informed patients of the incident "in an abundance of caution."

The incident occurred Feb. 19 and was discovered Feb. 27. The former employee said she accessed and sent the files "in the event that in the future she had to respond to questions about her past work at JMC," according to the breach notification HHC sent to patients.