Essentia Health Patient Data Breach

DULUTH, Minn. – Essentia Health is investigating a data privacy breach involving health information of more than 1,000 patients.

Hospital officials say a former third party vendor that assisted with billing services fell victim to an e-mail phishing incident.

At this time Essentia is not aware of any actual or attempted misuse of patient information.

All patients affected are being offered free credit monitoring services and they are being notified of the breach by mail.

Essentia released a statement, it reads in part:

“Patient privacy is crucially important to us and we apply significant time and resources to safeguard all patient-related information. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our patients.”