Saint Agnes Medical Center Responds to an Email Security Incident

FRESNO, Calif., March 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Saint Agnes Medical Center ("Saint Agnes") in Fresno is a member of Trinity Health, a multi-institutional Catholic health care delivery system, serving diverse communities that include more than 30 million people across 22 states. 
On February 5, 2021, Saint Agnes was notified by its sister health system, Saint Alphonsus Health System ("Saint Alphonsus"), located in Idaho/Oregon, that an email account of a Saint Alphonsus employee had been compromised by an unauthorized user. This individual used the employee's email to send phishing emails, January 4-6, 2021, in their attempt to obtain login IDs and passwords. 

Initially, the incident was thought to only affect Saint Alphonsus. It was later discovered that some of the compromised information from the report belonged to Saint Agnes patients because hospital billing for the West Region (that includes Saint Agnes) is handled by Saint Alphonsus.

Saint Alphonsus made the initial discovery on January 6, 2021 and moved quickly to identify the source and nature of the activity and to secure the email account to prevent future cyber-attacks. While there is no evidence of any misuse of information in the email account, a thorough review of its contents was conducted to determine what information might have been accessible at the time of this event.  Through the review it was determined that a report containing a combination of the following types of information might have been accessible: patient name, address, telephone, date of birth, email, and medical information such as medical record number, treatment information and billing information. 

A letter was sent to each of the patients included on the report, explaining the full details of what happened; the immediate actions taken by Trinity Health, Saint Alphonsus and Saint Agnes to address the incident; and how the incident may impact the privacy of certain information related to them. All patients were also offered a free credit monitoring service.

Saint Agnes deeply regrets any inconvenience or concern this situation may have caused its patients. It is believed to be an unfortunate and isolated incident.

SOURCE Saint Agnes Medical Center

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