There is a lawsuit pending against UC San Diego Health over a cyber attack that happened last winter and could have compromised the confidential info of up to 500,000 UC San Diego Health patients, employees, and others.
In a federal court in San Diego, lawyers for an El Cajon cancer patient filed a complaint on Monday citing malpractice, violation, and breaches of the state’s personal privacy and professional privacy protections. For the sake of all those whose patient health data may have been compromised, the lawsuit is asking for social standing and an unknown sum in damages.
“Patients should have trust that their most sensitive medical information will be kept private and that their hospital appointments will not expose them to data theft,” claimed San Diego Attorney Jason Hartley, who is organizing the lawsuit with Kansas City senior counsel Stueve Siegel Hanson. He also added that “If UC San Diego Health had implemented adequate data protection standards, this incident could have been averted.”
The defendants in the lawsuit include the Regents of the University of California, doing operation as UC San Diego Health. There was no response from the institution on the current situation. For four months starting on December 2, 2020, and closing on April 8, 2021, the healthcare organization stated on its website that hackers gained access to particular email accounts through the use of a phishing technique.
As a result, a wide range of medical and personal information may now be accessed. Due to a prolonged assessment, which would include contacting the FBI and working with other security analysts, UC San Diego Health did not reveal the number of people affected at the time.
“We’ve reached the end of that inquiry now.” When UC San Diego Health first started contacting the 495,949 people impacted by the event on a recurring basis starting on Sept. 7, contact details were made available, the spokesperson said.
As per the authorities, if you want to confirm if you are among the victims of this data breach incident, please provide your name and address and your date of birth, or any information you feel is relevant to your claim. You should also include details about any medical bills you have paid and the time and date that the claim was received. Identification numbers, such as social security numbers and state identifications; bank data; student identifications; and login credentials are also needed.
As per Hartley, healthcare information is particularly valuable to hackers since it may be used to obtain prescription meds without a doctor’s permission or to make fictitious medical insurance claims for care. In contrast to a stolen credit card, medical records typically contain extra personal information that may be exploited to open fictitious credit card accounts or get illicit loans. Medical records can be deleted.
In addition, the complaint claims that the medical system lacked standards for quickly recognizing the infiltration and wasted a lot of time alerting the victims of the invasions. Finally, it claims that the breach of the health care system’s responsibility to comply with HIPPA’s privacy and security requirements has been committed.
A data breach recovery firm, IDX, has agreed to provide a year of free identity theft prevention services and credit monitoring to anybody whose data may have been stolen under an agreement with UC San Diego Health. Provides identity theft recovery and insurance reimbursement coverage up to $1 million.
When it comes to protecting patient information, UC San Diego Health has a variety of safeguards in place to guard against unauthorized access. However, the healthcare system is always working to improve those safeguards in order to further decrease the threat.
