UnityPoint Health Facing Class Action Over Recent Data Breaches

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Iowa Health System, which does business as UnityPoint Health, has been hit with a proposed class action filed over two data breaches that reportedly occurred in late 2017 and early 2018 and compromised over 1.4 million patients’ private health information.

Filed by a Jane Doe plaintiff, the suit claims the healthcare network’s negligence and inadequate security systems are to blame for the two breaches, which allegedly exposed patients’ and consumers’ names, addresses, birth dates, contact information, medical records, insurance information, Social Security numbers, and other confidential data the suit says UnityPoint was entrusted to protect.

“The medical records disclosed by [the defendant] in the 2017 and 2018 breaches contained highly sensitive medical information,” the complaint explains, “including drug and alcohol information, mental health information, and patients who suffer from sexually transmitted diseases.”

The plaintiff in the case claims she received a letter from Iowa Health System in April 2018 notifying her of the first breach, which supposedly occurred around November 2017. The letter, the lawsuit says, instructed the woman to take certain precautions as “a general matter” but failed to offer any assistance that might mitigate the harm caused by the breach.

According to the complaint, the defendant discovered a second security breach in late May 2018 yet waited until August to notify affected consumers. The second letter sent out to proposed class members supposedly offered patients one year of complimentary identity protection services, which the case argues is insufficient to compensate the injuries suffered by the plaintiff and other potentially affected consumers.