LCMHS hospital suffered a Ransomware attack at Louisiana hospital that impacted 270,000 patients

The Lake Charles Memorial Health System (LCMHS) a non-profit community healthcare system in southwest Louisiana suffered a major ransomware attack that impacted ~270,000 patients.

LCMHS reported the incident to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary.

The security breach took place on October 21, 2022, during investigation it was found that threat actors have stolen files containing sensitive data, including:

Full names
Physical addresses
Dates of birth
Medical records
Patient identification numbers
Health insurance information
Payment information
Limited clinical information regarding the received care
Social Security numbers (in some cases)
The attackers had no access to electronic medical records.

Investigation find out that the unauthorized access occurred between October 20 and October 21, 2022, during which time the unauthorized third party accessed and obtained certain files from LCMHS systems. Data breach notification was published by LCMHS stating “We reviewed these files and determined that some patient information was contained within them, which may have included patient names, addresses, dates of birth, medical record or patient identification numbers, health insurance information, payment information and/or limited clinical information regarding care received at LCMH. In some limited instances, patients’ Social Security numbers were also included. LCMH’s electronic medical record was not accessible to the unauthorized party.”

According to the portal for breaches of healthcare organizations, the incident impacted 269,752 individuals.

Starting on December 23, 2022, the company is sending a data breach notification via mail to the impacted patients.
The company offers individuals whose Social Security number may have been compromised credit monitoring and identity theft protection services.

Despite the Notice sent to the patients doesn’t provide technical details about the attack, it seems that the company suffered a ransomware attack.

The Hive ransomware group added the LCMHS to the list of victims on its Tor data leak site on November 15, 2022, claiming that the attack took place on October 25, 2022.

The gang also published the files allegedly stolen from LCMHS systems, including contracts, bills of materials, medical info, medical records, scans, and more.