The covered entity (CE), Allina Health, reported that an employee improperly accessed the protected health information (PHI) of 3,807 individuals. The PHI involved included names, addresses, dates of birth, medical conditions, medications prescribed, and lab results. The CE notified HHS, affected individuals, and the media. The CE also took legal action to prevent the employee from disclosing any PHI of the records improperly accessed. Following this breach incident, the CE sanctioned the employee, created a call center to respond to inquiries, and retrained its workforce on the importance of patient privacy and its obligations to protect PHI. Additionally, Allina Health implemented administrative safeguards to better protect its PHI. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions noted above.
