Data breaches reported so far this year have surpassed full-year 2020

Healthcare providers, insurers and their business associates have reported 664 data breaches to the federal government since the start of the year, surpassing the total number of breaches reported in 2020.

The latest data from the Human Services Department's Office for Civil Rights show the largest number of healthcare data breaches in a year since regulators started tallying them in 2010. This year's total beat last year's by a single incident.

These breaches didn't affect as many patients as the worst year on record. Nealy 43 million patients' data were compromised in 2021, fewer than half the number recorded in 2015, when bad actors accessed confidential information on 112.5 million people. This year did see more data breaches than the previous two years, however.

Healthcare entities governed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act must disclose breaches within 60 days of discovering them, meaning some of the incidents in the HHS database may have occurred last year or even earlier. Likewise, the available data don't include incidents that may have taken place this November and December.The largest breach reported so far this year involved data on an estimated 3.5 million people who applied or enrolled for coverage from Florida Healthy Kids, the state's Children's Health Insurance Program contractor, as far back as 2013. Florida Healthy Kids discovered the hack—which it blamed on its former website host—last December and reported it to HHS this January.