HHS OCR breach portal (HIPAA breaches affecting 500 or more individuals) Primary notice
Posted on the HHS Office for Civil Rights breach portal with a submission date of Oct. 26, 2016.
- Organization as reported
- Anthem, Inc., IN
- Entity type as reported
- Health Plan
- Category as reported
Unauthorized Access/Disclosure
- Location of information as reported
- Submission date
- Oct. 26, 2016
- Observed by BreachRecords
- 2026-10-18 16:15 UTC (revision 14380, row:5519)
- Archived copy
- Held in the private archive (provenance)
The covered entity’s (CE) employee emailed protected health information (PHI) to himself, claiming it was for commission reconciliation purposes. The CE ensured that all the PHI was deleted from the employee’s home computer and smart phones. The employee resigned from the company, and attested that all PHI was deleted from his devices. The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media and substitute notice was posted on the CE's websites on October 29, 2016, and will remain posted through January 27, 2017. To prevent a similar breach from happening in the future, the CE retrained its Medicare sales workforce, took steps to ensure that the former employee can no longer work or sell the CE's products, and changed its commission statement to reflect only the minimum necessary PHI. OCR obtained written assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions listed above.