Community Health System (CHS) will pay $4.5 million to settle a class action HIPAA breach lawsuit from 2014, according to an article on the Campus Safety website.
The breach on CHS, which operates 206 hospitals in 29 states, exposed the names, birth dates, addresses, telephone numbers and Social Security Numbers of almost 4.5 million patients.
Patients who were treated at CHS-operated hospitals claimed that CHS failed to implement basic security procedures to make sure their personal information stayed safe.
The suit also claimed that CHS did not notify patients properly after the breach, causing “plaintiffs to remain ignorant of the breach, and therefore, plaintiffs were unable to take action to protect themselves from harm.”