Breach filing
ArchivedMeridian Health Services Corp.: 111,372 individuals, Apr 2020.
Meridian Health Services Corp. reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 27 April 2020. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Indiana and lists 111,372 individuals affected, which makes it the 17th largest of the 200 Indiana filings on the register and the 72nd largest of the 663 filings submitted nationally in 2020. Among the 17 Indiana filings made in 2020 it ranks 2nd.
Individuals affected
111,372
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$17.8M
Upper bound, method shown
Rank in IN
17th
of 200 Indiana filings
Rank in 2020
72nd
of 663 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
- 111,372
- Breach submission date
- 27 April 2020
- Submission year
- 2020
- Type of breach
- Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of breached information
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Indiana (IN)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Indiana by size
- 17th of 200
- Rank in 2020 nationally
- 72nd of 663
- Indiana median filing
- 3,600 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- IN-20200427-meridian-health-services
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Indiana and in 2020
OCR classifies the incident as a hacking or IT incident, with the breached information held in email. Hacking/IT Incident is the type recorded on 119 of the 200 Indiana filings (60%) and on 69% of all filings submitted in 2020. Email appears on 25% of Indiana filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 31% of Indiana filings do involve one. At 111,372 individuals the breach is 31 times the Indiana median filing of 3,600 and 28 times the national median of 4,000 across all 7,884 filings. It is one of 801 filings of 100,000 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.
Indiana's breach notification statute (Ind. Code 24-4.9) requires notice to affected residents without unreasonable delay, no more than 45 days after discovery. Its attorney general threshold: all qualifying breaches. 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 111,372 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 $17.8M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $21.4M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Meridian Health Services Corp.. 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.
The covered entity (CE), Meridian Health Services Corporation, reported that several employees were the victims of an email phishing scheme that affected the protected health information (PHI) of 111,372 individuals. The PHI involved included names, addresses, dates of birth, drivers' license information, Social Security numbers, diagnoses/conditions, lab results, medications prescribed, state identification numbers, and health insurance and other treatment information. The CE notified HHS, affected individuals, the media, and provided substitute notice. In its mitigation efforts, the CE implemented additional administrative and technical safeguards to better protect its PHI. In addition, the CE retrained its workforce members on the proper methods of identifying fraudulent email communications.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
111,372 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
Upper boundIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$17.8M
111,372 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$21.4M
111,372 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Meridian Health Services Corp. 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
Indiana statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Indiana: Ind. Code 24-4.9
- Notice to individuals
- Without unreasonable delay, no more than 45 days after discovery
- Attorney general threshold
- All qualifying breaches (Within the 45-day consumer notification window)
- Private right of action
- No: Enforced exclusively by the Indiana Attorney General
- Penalty
- Up to $150,000 per deceptive act, plus investigation costs
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
Indiana filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Indiana filings in 2020, topped up from other years where 2020 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elkhart Emergency Physicians, Inc . | Healthcare Provider | 550,000 | 28 May 2020 | |||
| Community Health Network, Inc. | Healthcare Provider | 81,118 | 11 Sep 2020 | |||
| Otis R. Bowen Center for Human Services | Healthcare Provider | 35,804 | 20 Mar 2020 |
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 3945.
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.