On October 31, 2023, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a press release announcing that it has settled with Doctors’ Management Services for $100,000 following a ransomware attack that compromised the protected health information of 206,695 individuals.
According to the press release, “this marks the first ransomware agreement OCR has reached.” The facts underlying the settlement include that Doctors’ Management Services was infected with GandCrab ransomware in April of 2017, but the intrusion was not detected until December of 2018. Doctors’ Management Services filed a breach report in April of 2019.
The OCR says that it found evidence that Doctors’ Management Services failed to implement a risk analyses to detect risks and vulnerabilities to protect health information including insufficient monitoring or its systems to protect against a cyber attack and a failure to implement requirements of HIPAA to protect the data.
In addition to the $100,000 settlement, Doctors’ Management Services is required to implement a corrective action plan.