About 45,000 Rush University Medical Center patients had their data exposed when a third-party employee mistakenly exposed a file containing the data to an unauthorized individual.
The Chicago hospital said the data breach most likely happened in May 2018 when a worker at the hospital system’s billing processing vendors disclosed a file containing the patient information to an unauthorized individual, the hospital said in a statement. Names, addresses, birthdays, Social Security numbers and health insurance information were included in the file, but hospital officials do not believe the information has been misused.
“Medical history, treatment, diagnosis or other patient information was not affected, and personal financial information was not shared,” Rush said.
The breach was discovered on January 22 and Rush began reporting the issue to those affected on February 28.
