in Newswire Published on July 20, 2022

Tenet Healthcare Corporation Sued Over April 2022 ‘Cybersecurity Incident’

Brewster et al. v. Tenet Healthcare Corporation

Filed: July 15, 2022 ◆§ 0:22-cv-61327

Tenet faces a class action after announcing in late April 2022 that it experienced a “cybersecurity incident” involving unauthorized activity on its network.

Defendant(s)

Tenet Healthcare Corp.

Law(s)

State(s)

Florida

Tenet Healthcare Corporation has been hit with a proposed class action after announcing in late April 2022 that it experienced a “cybersecurity incident” involving unauthorized activity on its network.

According to the 43-page lawsuit, Tenet, one of the largest for-profit healthcare systems in the United States, has failed to implement adequate cybersecurity protocols to safeguard the personally identifiable and protected health information of current and former patients and/or employees.

The case claims that those whose information was accessed in the data breach “now and will forever” face an increased risk of identity theft and fraud.

“Consequently, Plaintiffs and Class Members have had to spend, and will continue to spend, significant time and money in the future to protect themselves due to Tenet’s failures,” the complaint reads.

Per the case, hospitals connected to Tenet’s IT systems began to experience outages around April 20, 2022 that continued until at least April 26. Tenet announced on April 26 that it experienced a “cybersecurity incident” the prior week, during which unauthorized actors gained access to its network, the suit relays.

According to the complaint, the healthcare system failed to provide additional details about the incident.

“… [T]he Website Notice provides scant other information, including precisely whether, how much, and what types of information was accessed and/or copied, the exact causes of the Cybersecurity Incident, and how long these unauthorized third parties had access to the hospital systems containing the [personally identifiable information] and [protected health information] of Plaintiffs and Class Members.”

According to the case, Tenet has yet to notify patients whose information may have been compromised in the breach, or provide any further details about how the data was accessed and what information was involved. The complaint surmises that hospitals across the country that are connected to Tenet’s Dallas-based information technology network were affected by the incident.

Per the lawsuit, the ramifications of the cybersecurity incident for patients are “long lasting and severe” given fraudulent use of their information may continue for years.

The suit looks to represent anyone in the U.S. whose information was accessed, viewed, copied or acquired during the cybersecurity incident reported by Tenet on April 26, 2022.

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