Medical billing giant Episource announces millions of people across the United States that their personal and health information has been stolen in a cyber attack earlier this year.
The break affects more than 5.4 million people, according to listing with the US Department of Health and Human Servicesmaking it one of the greatest health gaps of the year so far.
Episource, owned by Health Insurance Giant UnitedHealth Group Optum, provides a billing adjustment to the doctors, hospitals and other organizations that work in the healthcare industry. As such, the company handles large amounts of personal and medical data from patients to process claims through its health insurance.
In notices posted in California And Vermont On Friday, Episource said a criminal could “see and take copies” of a patient’s data and a member of his systems during the weekly break -up ending February 6th.
The stolen information includes personal information, such as names, mailing and email addresses, and phone numbers, as well as protected health data, including medical record numbers, and data related to doctors, diagnoses, medications, test results, depiction, care and other treatment. The stolen data also contains health insurance information, such as health plans, policies and member numbers.
Episource did not describe the nature of the incident, but Sharp Healthcare, one of the companies who work with Episource and was hit by the Cyberattack, told his clients that The Episource Hack was caused by Ransomware.
This is the latest cybersecurity incident to hit UnitedHealth in recent years.
Change health care, one of the largest companies in the US healthcare industry, which processes billions of health transactions annually, have been chopped by ransomware gang in February 2024leading to the robbery of more than 190 million personal and health information from Americans. The Cyberattack was the largest gap on health data in American history.
Several months later, the UnitedHealth Optum unit left an internal chat boot Used by employees to ask about claims exposed to the Internet.
