Nuvance Health began informing selected Western Connecticut Health Network (WCHN) patients about the exposure of their protected health information (PHI).

CHN provided the Connecticut State Department of Public Health with a box of medical files on June 11, 2019. The network used the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to send the item, but it was damaged while transporting and the contents were exposed.

Upon learning about the damaged package, WCHN reclaimed it from the USPS. According to the spokesperson of WCHN, there was no evidence indicating the theft and misuse of any information from the package. In addition, the package did not appear to have been taken from the USPS facility until the WCHN personnel collected it.

WCHN has already altered its procedures for sending PHI to make sure such incidents do not happen again in the future. Patients received the notification letters on August 19, 2019.

The following types of data were included in the medical records: patients’ names, addresses, birth dates, provider names, dates of diagnosis, diagnoses, medical test results and medical record numbers,.

Impermissible Disclosure of PHI of 4,000 Arizona State University Students

Arizona State University (ASU) is informing about 4,000 students regarding the impermissible disclosure of their email addresses, including their names in some cases due to a recent mailing error.

The students received emails in late July informing them about the renewal of their health insurance. The email addresses ought to have been concealed but were exposed to other students who received the mailing.

Upon discovery of the error, ASU removed 2,540 of the email messages and mentioned that 1,130 messages were unread.

ASU is going over its policies and procedures and is going to take action to prevent occurrences like this from occurring again.