Center for Sight & Hearing

The covered entity (CE), Center for Sight & Hearing, reported that several employees were the victims of an email phishing scheme that affected the electronic protected health information (ePHI) of 5,319 individuals. The ePHI involved included names, addresses, dates of birth, drivers’ license numbers, Social Security numbers, financial information, diagnoses/conditions, and other treatment information. The CE notified HHS, affected individuals, the media, and provided substitute notice. In its mitigation efforts, the CE implemented additional administrative, technical, and security safeguards to better protect its ePHI. In addition, the CE retrained its workforce members on the proper methods of identifying fraudulent email communications. OCR provided technical assistance to the CE.