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About 974,000 medical patients at the University of Washington are affected by a data breach that released some names of medical records and other information on the Internet last December.
UW Medicine is distributing letters to those concerned with the data breach report.
Hospital staff stated that the records provided did not contain any medical records or patient financial information regarding Social Security numbers.
County Council member Reagan Dunn introduced a bill Wednesday afternoon asking the county executive to set up a commission to investigate the possible violation of public health data by UW Medicine.
"It's a data breach, but also a massive attack on public trust," Dunn said in a statement. That is why I immediately table a bill asking the county executive to set up a commission to investigate what is wrong, why, and how to ensure that it does not happen again. The public deserves so much better. "
UW Medicine Surgeon General Dr. Tim Dellit speaks with KIRO 7 at 3 pm Wednesday. This article will be updated with additional information after this briefing, and you will be able to watch his comments as part of this full story on KIRO 7 live at 5pm.
"On December 4, 2018, UW Medicine became aware of a vulnerability on a website server making protected internal files accessible and visible through the Internet," spokeswoman Susan Gregg said in a statement. "The files contained protected health information (PHI) on reports that UW Medicine is legally required to follow, such as reports to various regulatory agencies in accordance with Washington State reporting requirements."
Gregg said when UW Medicine learned that the files were exposed to the Internet: "We immediately took steps to remove information from the site and took appropriate action to delete the information recorded from all third-party sites. At the present time, there is no indication that there has been misuse or attempted use of the information exposed in this incident. "
Follow this link to read a Q-and-A from UW Medicine on the data problem.
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