7.7 million LabCorp patients exposed in same vendor data breach as Quest Diagnostics

Mackenzie Garrity -

Medical testing company Laboratory Corp. of America learned 7.7 million of its patients may have had their data exposed in the same vendor breach as Quest Diagnostics, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Billing collections vendor American Medical Collection Agency is alerting nearly 200,000 clients that a data breach may have exposed their patients' credit card or banking information. The vendor began alerting consumers May 14 that the data breach occurred within the billing company's payment system.

While LabCorp provided no laboratory results or diagnostic information to AMCA, patients' financial information may have been affected in the data breach. No Social Security numbers or insurance identification information was exposed in the data breach, as AMCA does not store that information.

Quest Diagnostics started notifying 11.9 million patients of the data breach. An investigation into the cause of the breach found that between August 2018 and March 2019 an unauthorized user gained access to AMCA's system.

AMCA didn't immediately comment on the incident. However, on June 3, the company said it has conducted an internal review, taken down its web payment platform and hired third-party security experts to investigate, reports WSJ.

LabCorp has suspended sending new collection requests to the billing vendor and halted AMCA from working on pending requests.

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