150,000 records of home healthcare firm exposed on web

An unencrypted database containing nearly 150,000 patient records of a California-based provider of home health and palliative care services was left exposed on the internet, said a cybersecurity researcher who discovered the unsecured data cache.

The exposed 23.7-gigabyte database contained medical documents that included names, patient ID numbers, Social Security numbers, physical addresses and phone numbers belonging to Archer Health, said researcher Jeremiah Fowler, who described his findings in a report issued on Thursday.

The database also included documents labeled as assessments, home health certifications, plan of care documents and discharge forms that contained personally identifiable and protected health information, including diagnoses, treatments and “other potentially sensitive health-related data that should not be publicly exposed,” he said.

Read more at Healthcare Info Security