Separate breaches impact MercyOne, other health providers

Iowa's MercyOne Clinton Medical Center, Illinois' Sparta Community Hospital District, and Mississippi Childrens Home Society have confirmed being impacted by separate cybersecurity incidents resulting in data breaches, according to HealthITSecurity. MercyOne disclosed that its network had been infiltrated by an unauthorized third party from March 7 to April 4, leading to the exposure of nearly 21,000 patients' protected health information, including names, addresses, physical or mental treatment data, and insurance details. Data restoration efforts are also underway, noted MercyOne, which has also adopted more technical safeguards to combat potential attacks. Meanwhile, almost 900 patients at the Sparta Community Hospital District have been informed regarding a data breach stemming from the compromise of an employee's email account from March 27 to 28, exposing patients' names, birthdates, phone numbers, addresses, medical record numbers, limited treatment data, and more, but not their Social Security numbers nor their financial details. On the other hand, Mississippi Children's Home Society, CARES Center Inc, and Mississippi Children's Home Services Inc., have launched an investigation into a data breach involving Canopy Children's Solutions, which was found to have its files encrypted on April 4. Details regarding the extent of the breach have not been disclosed.