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. 21, 2015.
- Organization as reported
- PT Northwest, LLC, OR
- Entity type as reported
- Healthcare Provider
- Category as reported
Unauthorized Access/Disclosure
- Location of information as reported
- Submission date
- Aug. 21, 2015
- Observed by BreachRecords
- 2026-10-18 16:15 UTC (revision 14727, row:5866)
- Archived copy
- Held in the private archive (provenance)
The covered entity (CE), PT Northwest, LLC inadvertently emailed a questionnaire to patients that was copied to 1,500 patients. The e-mail should have been distributed to recipients as a blind carbon copy. Some of the e-mail addresses contained patients' names. Following the breach, the CE sanctioned the employee who was responsible for the impermissible disclosure. The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. As a result of OCR’s investigation, the CE conducted companywide annual HIPAA training, and started the process of conducting in person follow-up HIPAA trainings to be completed by December 2015.