Lake Charles (La.) Health System is alerting its patients that in October, an unauthorized third party was able to access its network, chron.com reported Dec. 26.
The system's IT team detected the "unusual activity" Oct. 21 and on Oct. 25 determined that the activity was due to a cybersecurity incident. Lake Charles' EHR remained inaccessible to the third party.
The health system is offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services to patients affected by the incident.
The third party may have accessed patient names, dates of birth, patient identification numbers, health insurance information, payment information, limited clinical information and, in some instances, Social Security numbers.