PT Northwest

The covered entity (CE), PT Northwest, LLC inadvertently emailed a questionnaire to patients that was copied to 1,500 patients. The e-mail should have been distributed to recipients as a blind carbon copy. Some of the e-mail addresses contained patients' names. Following the breach, the CE sanctioned the employee who was responsible for the impermissible disclosure. The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. As a result of OCR’s investigation, the CE conducted companywide annual HIPAA training, and started the process of conducting in person follow-up HIPAA trainings to be completed by December 2015.