Aultman Hospital is sending out letters to alert patients of a possible data breach

CANTON ‑ Aultman Hospital has begun notifying some patients that someone may have gotten unauthorized access to their personal information.

The hospital said in a Friday afternoon statement it learned April 24 that someone had used an Aultman employee's work email account to send out phishing emails, which are emails intended to trick recipients to provide logins and passwords. The unauthorized person had gained access to the account sometime from April 22 to April 24.

Aultman said it secured the email account. It said it discovered that whoever had accessed the account had not used it to get into the hospital's electronic health records system. Nor did the data breach disrupt Aultman's services or operations.

More: Aultman warns patients of privacy breach

While the likely purpose of the intrusion was to use the email account to perpetuate a data phishing scheme, Aultman said it can't rule out that the person who got unauthorized access to the email account was able to obtain emails and attachments in the account with patients' personal information.

That personal information includes patients' names and medical record numbers and may also include dates of births, addresses, patient account numbers, health insurance identification numbers and information about diagnoses of the patient's medical condition and treatment.

Aultman said it began sending out letters to the affected patients, notifying them of the breach. Those who believe they were affected and have questions can call 800-482-2349 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday thru Friday except holidays.

Aultman advises that affected patients review any statements they got from healthcare providers and health insurance plans. If they find services they did not receive on the statements, they should contact the providers and health insurers immediately.

“At Aultman, we take this incident very seriously and sincerely regret any concern this may cause,” Aria Walker, Aultman's chief compliance officer said in the statement. “To help prevent something like this from happening again, we’ve increased cybersecurity training and implemented additional safeguards and technical security measures to further protect and monitor our systems.”

Reach Robert at robert.wang@cantonrep.com. X formerly Twitter: @rwangREP.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Aultman Hospital warning patients of possible data breach