Breach filing
ArchivedSouthwest Louisiana Health Care System, Inc. d/b/a Lake Charles Memorial Health System: 269,752 individuals, Dec 2022.
Southwest Louisiana Health Care System, Inc. d/b/a Lake Charles Memorial Health System reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 22 December 2022. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Louisiana and lists 269,752 individuals affected, which makes it the 3rd largest of the 66 Louisiana filings on the register and the 47th largest of the 718 filings submitted nationally in 2022. Among the 3 Louisiana filings made in 2022 it ranks 1st.
Individuals affected
269,752
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$43.2M
Upper bound, method shown
Rank in LA
3rd
of 66 Louisiana filings
Rank in 2022
47th
of 718 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
- 269,752
- Breach submission date
- 22 December 2022
- Submission year
- 2022
- Type of breach
- Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of breached information
- Network Server
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Louisiana (LA)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Louisiana by size
- 3rd of 66
- Rank in 2022 nationally
- 47th of 718
- Louisiana median filing
- 6,909 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- LA-20221222-southwest-louisiana-health-care-system-d
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Louisiana and in 2022
OCR classifies the incident as a hacking or IT incident, with the breached information held in a network server. Hacking/IT Incident is the type recorded on 41 of the 66 Louisiana filings (62%) and on 79% of all filings submitted in 2022. Network Server appears on 39% of Louisiana filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 32% of Louisiana filings do involve one. At 269,752 individuals the breach is 39 times the Louisiana median filing of 6,909 and 67 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.
Louisiana's breach notification statute (La. R.S. 51:3071 et seq.) requires notice to affected residents in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay, no later than 60 days from discovery. Its attorney general threshold: all breaches affecting Louisiana 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 269,752 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 $43.2M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $51.8M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Southwest Louisiana Health Care System, Inc. d/b/a Lake Charles Memorial Health System. 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), Southwest Louisiana Health Care System dba Lake Charles Memorial Health System, reported that it experienced a ransomware incident that affected the protected health information (PHI) of 269,752 individuals. The PHI involved included names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, health insurance and financial information, and other treatment information. The CE notified HHS, affected individuals, the media, and provided substitute notice. In response to the breach, the CE provided complimentary credit monitoring services and implemented additional administrative, technical, and security safeguards to better protect its PHI.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
269,752 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
Upper boundIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$43.2M
269,752 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$51.8M
269,752 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Southwest Louisiana Health Care System, Inc. d/b/a Lake Charles Memorial Health System 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
Louisiana statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Louisiana: La. R.S. 51:3071 et seq.
Database Security Breach Notification Law
- Notice to individuals
- In the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay, no later than 60 days from discovery
- Attorney general threshold
- All breaches affecting Louisiana residents (Within 10 days of distributing notices to residents)
- Private right of action
- Limited: Civil action for actual damages from failure to give timely notice, not for the breach itself
- Penalty
- Unfair trade practice; up to $5,000 per violation per day for AG-notification failures
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
Louisiana filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Louisiana filings in 2022, topped up from other years where 2022 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acadian Ambulance Service, Inc. | Healthcare Provider | 2,896,985 | 20 Aug 2024 | |||
| The Baton Rouge Clinic, A Medical Corporation | Healthcare Provider | 308,169 | 2 Sep 2020 | |||
| Imperial Health, LLP | Healthcare Provider | 116,262 | 18 Jul 2019 | |||
| Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections | Healthcare Provider | 85,466 | 31 Oct 2022 | |||
| General Health System | Healthcare Provider | 46,149 | 25 Aug 2022 |
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 2035.
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.