Presbyterian suffers data breach

Patients and health-plan members of Presbyterian Healthcare Services should be on alert. A May 9 data breach announced on Thursday could affect roughly 183,000 of Presbyterian’s customers.

Presbyterian officials in a news release stated they do not believe information from the breach has been used as of yet and that they notified federal authorities after the breach was discovered on June 6.

Presbyterian operates nine hospitals, including Plains Regional Medical Center in Clovis and Trigg Memorial Hospital in Tucumcari, while also providing a statewide health plan and a medical group. Administrators from Plains Regional Medical and Trigg Memorial Hospital could not be reached for comment.

In regard to the two-month timeframe between the discovery of the breach and the announcement, Presbyterian Communications Director Melanie Mozes stated:

“With any such event, it takes time to investigate what happened, identify the affected individuals and arrange for the assistance services that are being offered. Once we became aware of this incident, Presbyterian secured these email accounts and alerted federal law enforcement.”

According to a news release from Presbyterian, unauthorized access to the email accounts of some of their workforce members occurred on May 9. The breach potentially provided an intruder access to large amounts of personal information.

Such information includes patient and health plan members’ names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and other types of personal or clinical information.

Presbyterian stated it has since secured the affected emails and launched an investigation, which it says has not yet shown evidence that the data exposed in the breach has been used.

Dale Maxwell, CEO of Presbyterian Healthcare Services, stated in the news release that “While our investigation is ongoing, we have no evidence indicating any patient or member data has been used in any way and there was no access to our electronic health record or billing system.”

The investigation will continue to review each compromised account and inform patients and members who may have been affected. Maxwell stated that more of those affected may be identified and notified in the coming weeks.

Those who receive notice that they are affected are urged to review their health plan and healthcare statements and Presbyterian is offering free credit monitoring and identity protection services to those whose Social Security numbers have been compromised.

Presbyterian said in its release that it will also take additional security measures moving forward to prevent such an incident in the future and that it requires employees to complete annual, mandatory training in regard to protecting all information.

The breach was addressed Thursday afternoon when Maxwell sent an email to the board of directors, trustees and other company officials. The Eastern New Mexico News obtained a copy of that email, which estimated that roughly 183,000 patients and members could be affected.

The breach does not effect Presbyterian Medical, which is separate from Presbyterian Healthcare.