According to CNN Money online Monday morning, Community Health Systems, the parent company of Mesa View Regional Hospital in Mesquite, had recently been hacked and the information thieves stole information on 4.5 million patients including names, Social Security numbers, physical addresses and other personal info.
In the report, any person who has used services rendered by any of CHS’s facilities, including MVRH, in the past five years could be affected by the breach.
In a release from Rob Fuller, Director of Business Development for MVRH, patients of MVRH may not have been affected.
“Limited personal identification data belonging to some patients, who were seen at Mesa View Medical Group physician clinic over the past five years, was transferred out of our affiliated national data-base in a criminal cyber-attack by a foreign-based intruder. Mesa View Regional Hospital Patient Information Was NOT Compromised. The transferred information did not include any medical information or credit card information, but it did include names, addresses, birthdates, telephone numbers and social security numbers,” the release said.
“There is a chance that none of our patients’ information was accessed,” Fuller said in a phone call Tuesday morning. “We should know by the end of the week exactly how many records were affected, and will be sending out notices to those patients immediately.”
Those who were affected will receive the said letter soon, and CHS will offer free identity theft protection.
The release from Fuller on Monday went on to say, “Our organization believes the intruder was a group out of China that was likely looking for intellectual property such as device and equipment manufacturing. The intruder used highly sophisticated methods to bypass security systems. The intruder program has been eradicated and applications have been deployed to protect against future attacks. We are working with federal law enforcement authorities in their investigation and will support prosecution of those responsible for this attack.”
Updates on this story will be posted to our website as they become available.
I am a patient at the clinic next door to Mesa View Hospital. They do have my information at the hospital, as I have had some tests done at Hospital.
My concern is that my Email address has been compromised and used on AOL. Someone is using it to sent out advertising. I have noticed this the past week or so. I haven’t contacted AOL yet, but was planning on it. Then, I saw the news about the hacking into Mesa View Hospital records. I don’t know if this is related or not. I just thought I would mention this. Will see if I get a letter from Mesa View.
Thanks, Judy… Chances are that your email issues is just part of AOL’s vulnerability. Like Yahoo email, AOL is often hacked into easily by spammers. Another alternative could also be that someone is creating those emails to appear to be from you, but really it’s a different program that allows that sender to determine the reply-to address. This happens all the time, it’s a method to get you to click on those emails and the links within them that will possibly open up a virus to your computer.