Advent Health Partners Facing Class Action Over September 2021 Data Breach

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Advent Health Partners, Inc. faces a proposed class action over a September 2021 data breach during which consumers’ personally identifiable information was reportedly exposed to unauthorized access.

According to the 52-page lawsuit, Advent Health, who provides healthcare billing claims review services to hospitals and medical facilities, failed to fulfill its obligation to properly safeguard the data in its care. Data compromised in the incident included patients’ names, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, dates of birth, and health insurance, medical treatment and financial account details, the suit states.

The case argues that consumers whose information was exposed now face a heightened risk of identity theft and fraud due to Advent Health’s apparent cybersecurity failures.

The suit relays that Advent Health in early September 2021 detected “suspicious activity” on employee email accounts that contained patient data, and determined that a “threat actor” had gained unauthorized access to the information.

Despite learning of the data breach in September, the defendant, who first posted about the breach on its website in February 2022, waited until the end of March to begin notifying victims, offering “no explanation” for the delay, according to the case. 

The lawsuit claims that Advent Health’s “belated notice” to victims violated Tennessee law, which requires a company to provide “prompt and direct notice” of a data breach to affected state residents once it knows or has reason to know of any such breach.

The suit goes on to argue that Advent Health’s notice was not only belated but “woefully deficient” in that it failed to provide “basic details” about the breach. Moreover, the defendant has allegedly offered only one year of identity monitoring services to patients. To use these services, the suit says, consumers would be required to disclose additional personally identifiable information that Advent Health “had just demonstrated it could not be trusted with,” according to the case.

As the lawsuit tells it, Advent Health could have prevented the data breach by taking certain “common-sense measures” that every business, not just those in the healthcare sector who have a “heightened standard of care,” should implement.

Per the case, Advent Health failed to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Federal Trade Commission guidelines and industry standards, despite being “fully aware” of its obligation to protect patients’ information and the “significant repercussions” should it fail to do so.

The lawsuit looks to cover anyone in the U.S. whose private information was compromised as a result of the Advent Health data breach discovered in September 2021 and who was sent notice of the incident.

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