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 Feb. 5, 2016.
- Organization as reported
- Borgess Medical Center d/b/a Borgess Rheumatology, MI
- Entity type as reported
- Healthcare Provider
- Category as reported
Unauthorized Access/Disclosure
- Location of information as reported
- Paper/Films
- Submission date
- Feb. 5, 2016
- Observed by BreachRecords
- 2026-10-18 16:15 UTC (revision 14621, row:5760)
- Archived copy
- Held in the private archive (provenance)
On April 13, 2015, the covered entity (CE), Borgess Medical Center-Borgess Rheumatology, impermissibly disclosed protected health information (PHI) due to an erroneous use of “mail merge,” which mixed up 700 patients’ names and addresses. The PHI involved in the breach included patients’ names, medications, and their association with Borgess Rheumatology as patients. The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. Following the breach, the CE implemented a new process that included verification of the data files used for mail merges, including a Privacy Officer review. It also trained workforce members and added an informal quality check of spreadsheets involving patient information. OCR obtained documented assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions noted above.