1.5M Patients across Indiana Impacted by Data Breach

Hackers attacked Medical Information Engineering, a company based in Fort Wayne, Ind. that handles record services for radiology centers and healthcare providers.

The firm identified suspicious activity on a server in late May and then discovered the intruders had gained access to the system on May 7.

The compromised server stored home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and details about health insurance policy and coverage, among other information.

Notification letters began reaching victims in mid-July.

“These are very significant medical records, lab reports, people’s charts essentially online,” Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said. “So it does raise the same kind of fears that we warned against and have been worried about.”

Zoeller says that this breach is alarming because hackers now have access to medical records.

“We’re afraid that they will use them to defraud the government so they will be billing Medicaid or something like that,” Zoeller said. “That’s already been happening, we haven’t tracked it exactly who’s doing it or how.”