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 Dec. 8, 2017.
- Organization as reported
- Central Iowa Hospital Corporation d/b/a Blank Children's Hospital, IA
- Entity type as reported
- Healthcare Provider
- Category as reported
Unauthorized Access/Disclosure
- Location of information as reported
- Paper/Films
- Submission date
- Dec. 8, 2017
- Observed by BreachRecords
- 2026-10-18 16:15 UTC (revision 13977, row:5116)
- Archived copy
- Held in the private archive (provenance)
The covered entity (CE), Central Iowa Children’s Hospital – Blank Children’s Hospital (BCH), discovered that patient information was sent to the wrong recipients due to a column misalignment in the corresponding spreadsheet. This breach affected approximately 557 individuals. The protected health information involved in this breach included names, addresses, and zip codes. BCH notified all affected individuals, notified HHS, and provided substitute notice. As a result of the breach, BCH updated its privacy training, including mailing procedures. The privacy officer conducted an internal investigation to determine the root cause of the breach. Bases on the investigation, additional safeguards were put in place to protect PHI. Additionally, the employee responsible for the breach was retrained. The CE provided documentation of these corrective steps to OCR.