Cottage Health in California suffered data breach which affected nearly 11,000 patients. Outside IT security contractor found out the breach while testing the provider’s data systems. The contractor has since shut down the server. Potentially affected information includes patient names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and health information such as diagnosis or procedure. No other financial or billing information was included in the breach.
Affected Individuals include those receiving care at Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital, Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, and Santa Ynez Valley Cottage Hospital. Hospital has also offered those individuals a free, one-year subscription to a credit monitoring service.
Individuals are advised to put a fraud alert on their credit files due to the fact that Social Security numbers had been compromised.
Cottage Health mentioned that receiving a data breach
Cottage Healthcare Data Breach
notification letter does not necessarily mean that an individual has been the victim of identity theft. Hospital believes that it has no reason to believe that the information has been misused.
As per the statement:
Identity Protection and Credit Monitoring Services
For the individuals potentially impacted, we are offering identity theft protection services through ID Experts to provide FraudStop™ PHI Edition at no cost. ID Experts holds the American Hospital Association’s exclusive endorsement for breach response services. The provided services include:
12 months of recovery services
Healthcare Identity Protection Toolkit™
Exclusive educational materials, and
Access to fraud resolution representatives.
How to Detect Identity Theft
According to the FTC, the best way to detect identity theft is to monitor your accounts and bank statements each month, and check your credit report on a regular basis.
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