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 April 22, 2019.
- Organization as reported
- Doctors Management Services, Inc., MA
- Entity type as reported
- Business Associate
- Category as reported
Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of information as reported
- Network Server
- Submission date
- April 22, 2019
- Observed by BreachRecords
- 2026-10-18 16:15 UTC (revision 13436, row:4575)
- Archived copy
- Held in the private archive (provenance)
Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a settlement under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) with Doctors’ Management Services, a Massachusetts medical management company that provides a variety of services, including medical billing and payor credentialing. The HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules set forth the requirements that HIPAA-regulated entities must follow to protect the privacy and security of health information. The $100,000 settlement resolves a large breach report regarding a ransomware attack that affected the electronic protected health information of 206,695 individuals. Ransomware is a type of malware (malicious software) designed to deny access to a user’s data, usually by encrypting the data with a key known only to the hacker who deployed the malware, until a ransom is paid. This marks the first ransomware agreement OCR has reached. October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and OCR has been working with health insurers, providers, and clearinghouses covered by HIPAA to ensure better data security. Ransomware and hacking are the primary cyber-threats in health care. In the past four years, there has been a 239% increase in large breaches reported to OCR involving hacking and a 278% increase in ransomware. This trend continues in 2023, where hacking accounts for 77% of the large breaches reported to OCR. Additionally, the large breaches reported this year have affected over 88 million individuals, a 60% increase from last year. “Our settlement highlights how ransomware attacks are increasingly common and targeting the health care system. This leaves hospitals and their patients vulnerable to data and security breaches.” said OCR Director, Melanie Fontes Rainer. “In this ever-evolving space, it is critical that our health care system take steps to identify and address cybersecurity vulnerabilities along with proactively and regularly…