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 Aug. 5, 2016.
- Organization as reported
- Center for Minimmally Invasive Bariatric and General Surgery, PA
- Entity type as reported
- Healthcare Provider
- Category as reported
Unauthorized Access/Disclosure
- Location of information as reported
- Submission date
- Aug. 5, 2016
- Observed by BreachRecords
- 2026-10-18 16:15 UTC (revision 14461, row:5600)
- Archived copy
- Held in the private archive (provenance)
An employee erroneously emailed a group of 992 patients about a support group and copied other patients so that they were able to see the email addresses of all the other individuals to whom the email was sent. The types of protected health information (PHI) involved in this incident included email addresses and information which may have suggested that the individual was a patient of the covered entity (CE). The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. Following the breach, the CE revised its policies and procedures, attempted to recall the email, and retrained workforce members. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions noted above and provided technical assistance on reasonable safeguards.