Data Breach impacted more than 4700 patients of Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital

Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital of Grand Rapids City, Michigan, has announced that more than 4,700 patients have had few of its Protected Health Information (PHI) exposed due to the ransomware attack on Wolverine Solutions Group (WSG), their billing services provider based in Detroit.

As per the notice posted on their website, WSG says that an unauthorized party hacked into their computer system and then infected the system with malware. The billing services provider, i.e. WSG, experienced the ransomware attack on Sep. 25, 2018, although Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital only came to know about the names of
patients whose PHI might have been compromised on Feb. 6, 2019. Some of the healthcare clients were informed as early as in November, 2018, that their patients were impacted by the data breach; however some more time has been taken to determine all the patients who have been affected due to ongoing process of the file recovery.

All the hospital patients who were affected by the data breach have been sent notification letters on March 4, 2019, by the WSG. Wolverine Solutions issued the notifications based on the rolling discovery dates.

On the basis of an internal investigation, Wolverine Solutions Group says it believes that the hackers have only encrypted files and has never stolen them from the company's servers. The billing service provider added that the hackers encrypted several records of WSG and demanded payment for restoring the company's access. Even though PHI
could have possibly been viewed, WSG believes that the attack has been conducted with sole aim of obtaining the ransom payment. But as data access/theft cannot be ruled out, WSG has offered the affected individuals with 12 months of identity repair and credit monitoring services without charge.

WSG said names, dates of birth, addresses, medical records, insurance information and social security numbers were included in files that were encrypted during ransomware attack. The Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital says that none of their patients' medical record has been ever sent to the WSG.

WSG said that it hired forensic security experts from outside to decrypt affected files and then restore the access. The company added that most files have been restored by October 25, 2018.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/18/2019