Email breach hits Houston Methodist cancer patients

Houston Methodist letter dated March 16, 2017 to cancer patients about breach of personal email addresses. Houston Methodist letter dated March 16, 2017 to cancer patients about breach of personal email addresses. Photo: Houston Methodist Texas Medical Center Photo: Houston Methodist Texas Medical Center Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Email breach hits Houston Methodist cancer patients 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A "carbon copy" email sent last week from the Houston Methodist Cancer Center to patients showed the addresses of all recipients, potentially revealing their identities to the public and their association with the treatment facility.

Patients were alerted about the issue by Houston Methodist in a letter dated March 16 and sent out Friday morning, according to Methodist spokeswoman Stefanie Asin.

"On March 9, 2017, one of our employees unintentionally disclosed your email address to 1,416 other patients, and associated it with the Houston Methodist Cancer Center while requesting follow-up information. Instead of protecting your identifying information (for example using the bcc feature to "blind" your e-mail address), as required by our policies, the email addresses of all intended recipients were placed in the "cc" section, making the email addresses visible," the letter said. "Again, the only identifying information disclosed was your email address; no financial information (such as your social security number or your medical record number) or demographic information (such as your home address or date of birth) was included."

Methodist's investigation concluded that an error was made despite "appropriate policies, procedures, safeguards and training" and was discovered the same day. Efforts were made to recall the emails, the hospital said.

"We deeply regret any concerns you might have as a result of exposing your email address and associating it with the Cancer Center. We are sharing this information to be sure you know that we have extensive safeguards in place to protect the privacy and security of our patients' health information and we continually review and update our security safeguards," the letter said. "As a result of this incident, we are exploring the implementation of an additional technical safeguard to prevent this situation from happening again and we have retrained appropriate staff."

According to the letter, questions about the breach can be directed to Fran Feltovich at ffeltovich@houstonmethodist.org or 713.441.4798.