Data breach at Tennessee Blues could affect 1 million patients

The number of people at risk because of a data breach at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee has nearly doubled, according to a statement the insurer released in early April.

The breach, first reported in November 2009, was caused by the Oct. 2 theft of 57 hard drives from an office in Chattanooga, Tenn., that had housed a call center. The hard drives contained 1.3 million audio files and 300,000 video files related to coordination of care and eligibility phone calls from physician practices, hospitals and patients. The videos contained images of computer screens used by customer service representatives. The company said the files contained personal data and protected health information that was encoded but not encrypted.

The number of plan members whose data were exposed has grown from 521,761, an estimate made in March, to nearly 1 million, as of April 2, according to a report issued by Mary Thompson, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Blues.

The company said it has continually gone through the back-up files since the breach occurred to see what data were exposed. More cases were revealed through the review process, which Thompson said was almost complete.

The company divided plan members who were impacted into three tiers: tier 1 for those at the lowest risk: tier 2 for those at medium risk because lost data included names, addresses, dates of birth and diagnostic information; and tier 3, those at the highest risk because data also included Social Security numbers. It identified 238,589 members as tier 3. The largest number, 447,549, fell under tier 1.

So far there has been no evidence of identity theft or credit fraud resulting from the breach, and the company believes there is low risk of data being accessed, due to the specialized nature of the stolen software. But the insurer is offering credit monitoring to all those at risk, with different levels of monitoring depending on severity of risk.