Breach filing
ArchivedHeartCare Consultants: 16,000 individuals, May 2016.
HeartCare Consultants reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 11 May 2016. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Florida and lists 16,000 individuals affected, which makes it the 144th largest of the 463 Florida filings on the register and the 61st largest of the 328 filings submitted nationally in 2016. Among the 27 Florida filings made in 2016 it ranks 5th.
Individuals affected
16,000
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$2.56M
Method shown, not disclosed
Rank in FL
144th
of 463 Florida filings
Rank in 2016
61st
of 328 filings nationally
Section F.1 / The filing
As posted by HHS OCR
Every value below is the portal's own field for this filing, plus its rank within the register.
- Covered entity type
- Healthcare Provider
- Individuals affected
- 16,000
- Breach submission date
- 11 May 2016
- Submission year
- 2016
- Type of breach
- Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of breached information
- Electronic Medical Record
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Florida (FL)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Florida by size
- 144th of 463
- Rank in 2016 nationally
- 61st of 328
- Florida median filing
- 4,912 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- FL-20160511-heartcare-consultants
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Florida and in 2016
OCR classifies the incident as a hacking or IT incident, with the breached information held in an electronic medical record system. Hacking/IT Incident is the type recorded on 256 of the 463 Florida filings (55%) and on 35% of all filings submitted in 2016. Electronic Medical Record appears on 9% of Florida filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 25% of Florida filings do involve one. At 16,000 individuals the breach is 3.3 times the Florida median filing of 4,912 and 4.0 times the national median of 4,000 across all 7,884 filings. It sits in the 10,000 to 99,999 band, which holds 1,938 filings.
As of 28 August 2026 the case is listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive. OCR's closing summary of the case is reproduced in full below.
Florida's breach notification statute (Fla. Stat. 501.171) requires notice to affected residents within 30 days of determining a breach occurred (up to 15-day extension for good cause). Its attorney general threshold: 500 or more Florida residents. The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule ran alongside it: notice to affected individuals and to HHS without unreasonable delay and no later than 60 days after discovery, which is the clock that put this filing on the portal.
Multiplying 16,000 individuals by IBM's $160 customer-PII cost per record (Cost of a Data Breach 2025, the figure the site's calculator uses) gives a modelled $2.56M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $3.07M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by HeartCare Consultants. For scale, IBM's 2026 average cost of a healthcare breach is $6.64M, so this filing models at 0.5 times the sector average.
Section F.3 / OCR closing summary
The portal's archived description, in full
Written by the Office for Civil Rights when the case was closed and reproduced verbatim from the HHS export.
On March 30, 2016, Heartcare Consultants, LLC, the covered entity (CE), discovered that its business associate (BA), Bizmatics, had experienced a cyber-attack potentially exposing the social security numbers, demographic, clinical, and health insurance information of 16,143 individuals. The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals and the media and provided credit monitoring and identity theft protection to the affected individuals. At the time of the breach, the CE failed to have in place a BA agreement with the BA. Following the breach, the CE entered into a BA agreement, revised its HIPAA policies and procedures, and retrained its entire workforce. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions listed above.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
16,000 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
ModelledIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$2.56M
16,000 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$3.07M
16,000 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by HeartCare Consultants to HHS, multiplied by IBM's customer-PII cost per record (Cost of a Data Breach 2025 Figure 6 and the 2026 edition). No cost has been disclosed by the entity for this filing; the figure is a planning estimate, not a fact about the breach. IBM's per-record figures come from mid-volume breaches and IBM cautions against applying them to breaches involving millions of records; the site's per-record page explains where the multiplication holds and where it breaks down.
Context: IBM's average cost of a healthcare breach is $6.64M in the 2026 report ($7.42M in 2025); the global average across all sectors was $4.44M in 2025.
Cost per record: method and limits / Healthcare breach cost, IBM 2026
Section F.6 / Notification clock
Florida statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Florida: Fla. Stat. 501.171
Florida Information Protection Act (FIPA)
- Notice to individuals
- Within 30 days of determining a breach occurred (up to 15-day extension for good cause)
- Attorney general threshold
- 500 or more Florida residents (Within 30 days of the breach determination)
- Private right of action
- No: FIPA does not permit direct individual lawsuits; AG enforcement only
- Penalty
- Escalating civil penalties up to $500,000 per breach; also an unfair or deceptive trade practice
The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule runs alongside the state statute: notice to affected individuals and to HHS without unreasonable delay and no later than 60 days after discovery.
Section F.7 / Peer filings
Florida filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Florida filings in 2016, topped up from other years where 2016 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southeast Eye Institute, P.A. dba eye Associates of Pinellas | Healthcare Provider | 87,314 | 5 May 2016 | |||
| Public Health Trust of Miami-Dade County, Florida | Healthcare Provider | 24,188 | 19 Feb 2016 | |||
| Vision Care Florida, LLC | Healthcare Provider | 7,500 | 16 Nov 2016 | |||
| Florida Hospital Medical Group | Healthcare Provider | 6,786 | 21 Oct 2016 |
Index / Companion schedules
13 HHS breach register
→Hub: every filing, by state, year and entity.
04 Biggest breaches
→Mega-breaches with primary-source cost figures.
Industry / Healthcare
→IBM 2026: $6.64M average, 13 years at #1.
Regulation / HIPAA penalties
→OCR enforcement tiers and the 60-day rule.
11 50-state laws
→Deadline, AG threshold and penalties per state.
Cost / Per record
→Where the per-record model is reliable.
Provenance
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights, Breach Portal (breaches affecting 500 or more individuals), retrieved 2026-08-28. Public domain. Individuals affected and dates as reported by the covered entity.
Portal: ocrportal.hhs.gov breach report. Statutory basis: HITECH Act section 13402(e)(4): the Secretary must post a list of breaches of unsecured protected health information affecting 500 or more individuals. Breaches affecting fewer than 500 individuals are reported to OCR annually and are not posted, so they are not on this register. Status wording follows the portal's two tabs ("Cases Currently Under Investigation" and "Archive") as of 28 August 2026; a filing moves to the archive when OCR closes the case. Modelled costs on this site are a method applied to the reported count, using IBM Cost of a Data Breach per-record figures, and are never a cost disclosed by the entity. This row: hhs-breach-archive__2026-08-28.csv, export row 5578.
Corrections: if you represent a listed entity and the portal row has been amended, email [email protected] with the portal entry and we will re-pull the export.