Professional Dental Alliance, an organization of dental practices associated with the North American Dental Group, informed its patients that an unauthorized person accessed some of their protected health information (PHI) kept in email accounts from March 31 to April 1, 2021.
Professional Dental Alliance states the breach happened at North American Dental Management, its vendor. Steps were promptly undertaken to protect the impacted accounts and block the unauthorized person’s access. An investigation was started which showed an unauthorized individual accessed a number of email accounts after staff clicked on the phishing emails.
The breach investigation did not find any evidence of actual or attempted patient data misuse, with the investigators ending the breach was probably restricted to the credential collection. A thorough analysis of the impacted email accounts affirmed the inclusion of PHI for instance names, telephone numbers, addresses, email addresses, insurance details, Social Security numbers, dental data, and/or financial details. Professional Dental Alliance states the unauthorized person did not access the electronic dental record system and dental photos.
Although it seems there was no theft of protected health information, affected persons were instructed to be careful and check their credit reports and account statements and be wary of indications of data misuse of their information. Professional Dental Alliance states impacted persons are being provided a free membership to credit monitoring and identity theft protection services for two years.
The breach reports were sent to the DHS’ Office for Civil Rights by all the covered entities impacted. No less than 125,760 patients had their PHI exposed.
- 6,237 persons affected at the Professional Dental Alliance of Connecticut
- 18,626 persons affected at the Professional Dental Alliance of Florida
- 23,974 persons affected at the Professional Dental Alliance of Georgia
- 16,673 people affected at the Professional Dental Alliance of Illinois
- 7,359 people affected at the Professional Dental Alliance of Indiana
- 607 persons affected at the Professional Dental Alliance of Massachusetts
- 26,054 persons affected at the Professional Dental Alliance of Michigan
- 10,778 people affected at the Professional Dental Alliance of New York
- 11,217 people affected at the Professional Dental Alliance of Tennessee
- 4,235 people affected at the Professional Dental Alliance of Texas