Tampa Bay Surgery Center Data Breach (2017)

On May 5, 2017, Tampa Bay Surgery Center was made aware of a security incident in which certain patient data was posted to a public online file-sharing site by an unauthorized third party. Law enforcement informed the healthcare center that the information was posted the day prior. A Twitter user claiming to be the unauthorized party had obtained the file and included a link to the file on the public forum. The file has since been removed from the site, and the healthcare center’s investigation into the incident is presently ongoing. According to the OCR data breach reporting tool, the information of 25,848 patients was potentially exposed in the incident. Possibly exposed information included patient names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security Numbers.