LifeBridge Health Data Breach Lawsuit

On December 20, 2018, Stueve Siegel Hanson and Murphy, Falcon & Murphy filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of approximately 500,000 victims of a data breach experienced by Baltimore-based LifeBridge Health, Inc.

The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, alleges that LifeBridge failed to adequately safeguard and secure the medical information and other personally identifiable information of patients, including names, addresses, dates of birth, diagnoses, medications, clinical and treatment information, insurance information, and in some instances, social security numbers.

According to LifeBridge, the breach of confidential patient information began in September 2016, but was not discovered until 18 months later. The company then waited another six weeks, until March 28, 2018, to publicly disclose the problem. The lawsuit alleges that victims of this breach are in immediate danger of suffering financial or medical identity theft and fraud, and have been or will be forced to spend time and money protecting themselves from the risk caused by LifeBridge’s lax data security. The plaintiffs, both Baltimore residents, seek damages and other relief on behalf of all Maryland victims for alleged violations of state privacy statutes and negligence.

Read the Baltimore Business Journal’s story on the lawsuit here. 

Healthcare-related data theft and fraud is a massive and growing problem with dire consequences for consumers. The type of patient personal and medical information maintained by the healthcare industry is extremely valuable on the black market and can be used by criminals to submit false claims, facilitate insurance fraud, and otherwise steal patient identities. Dozens of cyberattacks against healthcare organizations occurred in 2018 alone.

If you are a patient affected by the LifeBridge data breach, or any other healthcare data breach, please call 1.800.714.0360.