Up to 1.8 Million Individuals Affected by NYC Health + Hospitals Data Breach

The HIPAA Journal reported on a data breach affecting patients of NYC Health + Hospitals Corporation in late March (see below), after the New York healthcare provider disclosed details of the breach. Hackers had access to its network for 11 weeks, with the investigation suggesting that initial access was gained via a security breach at one of its vendors. At the time of reporting, it was unclear how many individuals had been affected.

NYC Health + Hospitals is the largest public health system in the United States, and serves more than 1 million New Yorkers, mostly uninsured patients under state benefits programs such as Medicaid. The Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) breach portal has been updated to show that the personal and protected health information of approximately 1.8 million current and former patients and employees was compromised in the incident, making this one of the largest healthcare data breaches to be announced so far this year.

The affected employees and patients have been offered complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft protection services for 24 months. Those services are being made available free of charge to any individual who was a workforce member for NYC Health + Hospitals or a patient of NYC Health + Hospitals at any point between 2020 and February 2, 2026.

March 25, 2026: NYC Health + Hospitals Discloses 11-week Network Compromise

On March 24, 2026, NYC Health + Hospitals Corporation announced that personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) were exposed in a data security incident. NYC Health + Hospitals identified suspicious activity within its computer network on February 2, 2026. Immediate action was taken to secure the affected systems, and an investigation was launched to determine the nature and scope of the unauthorized activity, with assistance provided by third-party cybersecurity specialists.

The investigation determined that an unauthorized third party first gained access to its network more than two months previously, on November 25, 2026, and retained access until February 11, 2026. The investigation into the incident is ongoing; however, NYC Health + Hospitals believes that initial access to its systems may have been gained in a security breach at one of its third-party vendors. The name of that vendor was not disclosed.

NYC Health + Hospitals determined that files were exfiltrated from its network, some of which contained PII and PHI. Over the past few weeks, NYC Health + Hospitals has been reviewing the impacted data to determine the types of information involved and the individuals affected by the incident. The delay in issuing notifications to the affected individuals was due to the time taken to review the affected data. There were no instructions from law enforcement to delay notifications.

Based on the results of the data review to date, the following types of data were compromised in the incident: names; medical information (medical record numbers, disability codes, diagnoses, medications, test results, images, treatment plans); health insurance information (plans/policies, insurance companies, member/group ID numbers, Medicaid-Medicare-government payor ID numbers), billing/claims information; biometric information (finerprints & palm prints); personal information (Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers or other government-issued identification numbers, taxpayer identification numbers or IRS-issued identity protection numbers, precise geolocation data, credit or debit card numbers, financial account information or credentials, online account credentials). The information involved varies from individual to individual.

NYC Health + Hospitals said several steps have been taken to bolster security to prevent similar incidents in the future. They include enhanced detection rules for cybersecurity tools, password resets for compromised accounts, additional detection and protective technologies, and updates to remote access management policies. Credit monitoring and identity theft protection services have been offered to the affected employees and patients for 24 months.

This is the second large data breach to be reported by NYC Health + Hospitals so far this year. An earlier incident occurred around the same time as this hacking incident, and while it exposed the data of NYC Health + Hospitals patients, the breach occurred at one of its Care Management Agency Partners, NADAP. NADAP provides care coordination services to patients who received services under NYC Health + Hospitals’ Lead Health Home.

The data breach exposed the protected health information of 5,086 individuals. The incident occurred on or around November 26, 2025, and was identified by NADAP on January 10, 2026. NYC Health + Hospitals was notified about the data breach on January 2, 2026. Data compromised in the incident included patients’ names, dates of birth, addresses, Medicaid numbers, Social Security numbers, and clinical information related to their home-based health care provided by NADAP.

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Deaconess Health System Affected by Vendor Data Breach

Evansville, Indiana-based Deaconess Health System has announced a data breach involving information shared with a third-party vendor, the MRO Corp-owned company MediCopy. Deaconess Health System is one of the largest health systems in the Illinois-Indiana-Kentucky tri-state area, and operates 18 hospitals in southwestern Indiana, western Kentucky, and southeastern Illinois. The data breach affects certain patients of two of its hospitals: Deaconess Henderson Hospital in Henderson, KY, and Deaconess Union County Hospital in Morganfield, KY.

Deaconess Health System contracted with MediCopy to handle release of information (ROI) requests. Deaconess Health System’s substitute breach notice explains that MediCopy informed the health system about the security incident on February 2, 2026. The investigation determined that an unauthorized actor accessed MediCopy-controlled/managed cloud-based file-sharing software on January 13, 2026, and downloaded files related to ROI requests. The security incident was limited to the cloud-based platform. There was no unauthorized access to any Deaconess Health System’s IT systems or electronic health record system. A spokesperson for MRO said neither the MRO platform nor MediCopy systems were compromised in the incident.

Deaconess Health System conducted a comprehensive review of the affected data and determined that the information compromised in the incident included names, dates of birth, dates of service, medical record numbers, Social Security numbers, health insurance information, and medical records related to the treatment received at Deaconess Health System hospitals.

Notification letters are being mailed to the affected individuals by Deaconess Health System, which is offering complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft protection services. Deaconess Health System has confirmed that additional measures have been implemented to further strengthen the security of its file-sharing platform and the information maintained on that platform.

The number of Deaconess Health System patients affected by the data breach has yet to be publicly disclosed. Deaconess Health System said it has reported the breach to the appropriate agencies,  but the breach is not yet shown on the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights breach portal. There has been a delay in adding data breaches to the OCR data breach portal. While there have been some additions of data breaches with reporting dates prior to February 26, 2026, the breach portal lists no new additions after that date (as of March 25, 2026).

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Florida Insurance Commissioner Suspends Mirra Health for Medicare Data Transfers to Foreign Companies

The sensitive data of more than 23,000 Florida Medicare members has been impermissibly shared with overseas companies, putting Medicare members’ sensitive health data at risk. The data was shared by Mirra Health, a provider of administrative services to health maintenance organizations (HMOs) in Florida.

Mirra Health had contracts with three HMOs in Florida: Secure Inc, Solis Health Plans Inc., and Ultimate Health Plans Inc. Under those contracts, Mirra Health agreed to provide certain administrative services, including member enrollment, claims adjudication and payment, utilization management, and grievance and appeals processing. Mirra Health engaged four unlicensed companies in India and the Philippines to perform claims processing and other functions and provided those companies with the necessary data to perform those functions.

While Mirra Health may choose to delegate certain functions to subcontractors, sensitive data was shared with unlicensed companies without the knowledge or prior approval of the HMOs or their enrollees. Under the terms of its contracts with the HMOs, prior authorization must be received before passing any data to offshore partners.

An investigation conducted by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation determined that Mirra Health had engaged in business practices that pose an imminent threat to the public health, safety, and welfare of state residents. Mirra Health was found to have disclosed the sensitive data of 23,119 Florida Medicare Advantage enrollees to those unlicensed companies. The majority of the affected individuals participated in Chronic Condition Special Needs Plans (C-SNPs), Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPs), and Institutional Special Needs Plans (I-SNPs). When the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation requested that Mirra Health produce the contracts it had signed, it failed to produce all contracts with overseas companies, in violation of section 626.884 of the Florida Insurance Code.

This week, Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky suspended Mirra Health LLC’s certificate of authority. Yaworsky said the company demonstrated it is not competent or trustworthy, as it disclosed sensitive Medicare data to foreign entities that are beyond the regulatory reach of the Office of Insurance Regulation, depriving both the Office and the HMOs of the ability to protect vulnerable state residents.

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High Severity Vulnerability Identified in Grassroots DICOM

A high-severity vulnerability has been identified in Grassroots DICOM that could be exploited by a remote threat actor to trigger a denial-of-service condition.  The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-3650, is a memory leak issue that has been assigned a CVSS v3.1 severity score of 7.5.

Grassroots DICOM is a C++ library for DICOM medical images that comes with a scanner implementation capable of quickly scanning hundreds of DICOM files for attributes. Grassroots DICOM is used by healthcare and public health sector organizations worldwide, including in the United States.

The vulnerability affects Grassroots DICOM (GDCM) version 3.2.2 and occurs when parsing malformed DICOM files with non-standard VR types in file meta information. If an attacker sends a specially crafted file, when that file is parsed, it leads to vast memory allocations and resource depletion, triggering a denial of service condition. A maliciously crafted file could fill the heap in a single read operation without properly releasing it.

The vulnerability was identified by Volodymyr Bihunenko, Mykyta Mudryi, and Markiian Chaklosh of ARIMLABS, who reported it to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which contacted the maintainer of Grassroots DICOM; however, the maintainer failed to respond to requests by CISA to mitigate the vulnerability.

While there is currently no fix to remediate the vulnerability, CISA has suggested recommended practices to reduce the potential for exploitation. They involve ensuring that the Grassroots DICOM is not exposed to the internet, that control system networks are located behind firewalls and are isolated from business networks, and if remote access is required, that secure methods are used to connect, such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), ensuring that the VPN is running the latest software version.

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