Access Health Care Physicians

Access Health Care Physicians, LLC, the covered entity (CE), discovered that on May 26, 2016, an intruder broke into one of the physician’s locked offices and pried open locked file cabinets where patients’ financial records were stored, affecting the demographic and clinical information of approximately 2,500 individuals. The file cabinets contained records which included patients’ names, dates of birth, phone numbers, home addresses, diagnoses code, social security numbers, and insurance information. The CE provided timely breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. In response to the breach, the CE immediately secured the physician’s office where the breach occurred, changed the locks, and installed an alarm system. It moved the records of former patients to a secure offsite storage facility. The CE conducted a survey of all of its affiliated physician offices to ensure every office installed an alarm system. OCR obtained assurances that the CE has implemented the corrective actions listed above.