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Rush System for Health says personal information for about 45,000 patients has been compromised. The health system disclosed in a financial filing that the data breach, which it learned about on Jan. 22, was due to an employee at one of its third-party claims processing vendors sharing a file containing patient information with an unauthorized party. While medical history was not disclosed, patient names, addresses, Social Security numbers, birthdates and health insurance information for those tens of thousands of patients was exposed. (Goldberg, 3/4)

The breach is just the latest in what has been a continuing pattern of data security problems at hospitals across the nation. At Rush, an employee of one of the hospital system’s billing processing vendors improperly disclosed a file to “an unauthorized party,” likely in May 2018, according to a letter sent to affected patients. Rush said it discovered the breach Jan. 22. It detailed the breach in a financial filing dated Feb. 12, and it sent letters dated Feb. 25 to affected patients. It took several weeks to send letters to patients because Rush had to review the data and set up a call center to assist patients, among other things, said Deb Song, a spokeswoman for Rush. (Schencker, 3/4)

Apple is touting its new health software with an aggressive public relations strategy that worries many cardiologists, who feel the company is exaggerating the significance of the Apple Watch readings of a heart condition called atrial fibrillation. Critics are also concerned that the FDA’s unusual celebration of Apple’s new tech — which is central to the company’s move into health care — represents boosterism that distorts the agency’s role of assuring the safety and efficacy of medical devices. (Tahir, 3/4)