Another Ascension Data Breach

Ascension has sold out of Michigan, but just before they sold their last facilities here one of their contractors suffered a major data breach.  This is new and unrelated to Ascension's system wide data breach a year ago:

https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2025/04/ascension-data-breach-impacts-patients-in-5-states-including-michigan.html

Ascension data breach impacts patients in 5 states, including Michigan
By Ryan Boldrey | April 28, 2025

KALAMAZOO, MI — Ascension Health is offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services to those impacted by a recent data breach.

The St. Louis-based healthcare provider, which has four hospitals and 35 outpatient clinics in Southwest Michigan, announced the patient data breach in a news release on Monday, April 30 [???].

According to the notice, sites of care in Alabama, Michigan, Indiana, Tennessee and Texas were all impacted as a result of the breach.

The incident did not involve Ascension systems, networks or electronic health records, said spokesperson Chris Hunt.

The healthcare provider learned Dec. 5, 2024 that patient information may have been involved in a potential security incident, Hunt said.

As a result, Ascension immediately initiated an investigation to determine whether, and how, a security incident occurred.

In late January, it was determined that Ascension inadvertently disclosed information to a former business partner, Hunt said.

Some of that information was determined to have been “likely stolen” due to a “vulnerability in third-party software” used by the former partner.

Data involved in the breach included demographic information, such as names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, race, gender and social security numbers.

Also included was clinical information related to inpatient visits, such as places of service, physician names, admission and discharge dates, diagnoses and billing codes, medical record numbers and insurance company names.

The exact type of information involved varied by patient, Hunt said.

Ascension officials have since reviewed company processes and are working to implement enhanced measures to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

Those impacted have been offered two years of complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft protection services by Kroll. Services include credit monitoring, fraud consultation and identity theft restoration.

Impacted patients were encouraged to monitor credit reports for suspicious activity and provided a guide with additional information on how to protect their information, Hunt said.

Anyone with questions is asked to contact a dedicated call center at 866-408-3556, between 8 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. CST, Monday through Friday, excluding major U.S. holidays.

Ascension recently announced all of its remaining Michigan hospitals and outpatient clinics were being sold to Indiana-based Beacon Health System.