Breach filing
ArchivedThe Nemours Foundation: 1,055,489 individuals, Oct 2011.
The Nemours Foundation reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 7 October 2011. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Florida and lists 1,055,489 individuals affected, which makes it the 15th largest of the 463 Florida filings on the register and the 4th largest of the 200 filings submitted nationally in 2011. Among the 12 Florida filings made in 2011 it ranks 1st.
Individuals affected
1,055,489
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$169M
Upper bound, method shown
Rank in FL
15th
of 463 Florida filings
Rank in 2011
4th
of 200 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
- 1,055,489
- Breach submission date
- 7 October 2011
- Submission year
- 2011
- Type of breach
- Loss
- Location of breached information
- Other
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Florida (FL)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Florida by size
- 15th of 463
- Rank in 2011 nationally
- 4th of 200
- Florida median filing
- 4,912 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- FL-20111007-nemours-foundation
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Florida and in 2011
OCR classifies the incident as loss of records or equipment, with the breached information held in another location. Loss is the type recorded on 16 of the 463 Florida filings (3%) and on 10% of all filings submitted in 2011. Other appears on 7% of Florida filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 25% of Florida filings do involve one. At 1,055,489 individuals the breach is 215 times the Florida median filing of 4,912 and 264 times the national median of 4,000 across all 7,884 filings. It is one of 149 filings on the register of one million or more individuals.
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 1,055,489 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 $169M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $203M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by The Nemours Foundation. Because the filing is above the roughly 100,000-record range in which the per-record figure is reliable, the result is an upper bound, not an estimate: fixed costs are spread across far more records at this scale.
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.
A locked cabinet was removed from an IT service desk area at the Wilmington, Delaware facility of the covered entity (CE), The Nemours Foundation during an August 2011 remodeling project. The cabinet housed three unencrypted backup tapes containing the electronic protected health information (ePHI) of 1,055,489 individuals. The ePHI involved in the breach included patients' names, addresses, social security numbers, diagnoses and procedure codes. The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media, and offered one year of free credit monitoring to affected individuals. Following the incident, the CE hired a private investigator to assist in locating the missing backup tapes; however, they were not recovered. Additionally, the CE retained Navigant Consulting to assess the recoverability of the information and to conduct a validation review of CE's internal analyses. In response to the incident, the CE improved safeguards by encrypting all backup tapes, storage devices, and electronic media that may contain e-PHI, moving backup tapes to a secure off-site facility, installing non-movable storage cabinets in its data centers, and implementing two-factor authentication for access to ePHI. It also hired a system administrator to manage and audit backup procedures, retrained staff, and updated and created HIPAA policies and procedures, including role-based access to cabinets containing backup data. OCR obtained assurances that the corrective actions listed above were carried out.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
1,055,489 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
Upper boundIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$169M
1,055,489 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$203M
1,055,489 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by The Nemours Foundation 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 2011, topped up from other years where 2011 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Broward Hospital District d/b/a Broward Health | Healthcare Provider | 1,351,431 | 2 Jan 2022 | |||
| AvMed, Inc. | Health Plan | 1,220,000 | 3 Jun 2010 | |||
| Florida Department of Health | Healthcare Provider | 729,699 | 23 Aug 2024 | |||
| Ankle + Foot Center of Tampa Bay, Inc. | Healthcare Provider | 156,000 | 3 Jan 2011 | |||
| Florida Hospital | Healthcare Provider | 12,784 | 13 Oct 2011 |
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 6807.
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.