The McPherson Hospital is a massive health facility located in McPherson, Kansas. The hospital first opened in 1898, and today it manages a staff of 225 people and generates approximately $7 million in revenue annually. This massive health organization maintains information for thousands of patients, and that data is at risk, it turns out. The information held within the hospital's file network
The McPherson Hospital data breach occurred when an individual broke into the file network and began taking data for misuse. The information stolen from the network is likely to be used to commit fraud, to make money off the patients, and to do real harm. It's unclear how the attacker gained entry into the file network, but once inside, they began accessing confidential data and saving it for later use.
The data breach first occurred earlier this year, around April. There aren't official dates attached to the breach, but notices about it went out on May 4, 2023. At that point, individual letters were sent to everyone believed to be involved with this attack.
This McPherson data breach impacts patients of the hospital specifically. Patient data was taken from thousands of different patients and is being held in an effort to try and get money from it. The data may be resold, and it might be used for phishing attacks or identity theft.
There isn't a count of the McPherson Hospital documents taken during this breach. We only know that approximately 19,000 patients were exposed by the attack and that their data isn't safe.