Breach filing
ArchivedDelta Health System: 216,532 individuals, Mar 2024.
Delta Health System reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 29 March 2024. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Mississippi and lists 216,532 individuals affected, which makes it the 4th largest of the 55 Mississippi filings on the register and the 82nd largest of the 741 filings submitted nationally in 2024. Among the 5 Mississippi filings made in 2024 it ranks 1st.
Individuals affected
216,532
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$34.6M
Upper bound, method shown
Rank in MS
4th
of 55 Mississippi filings
Rank in 2024
82nd
of 741 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
- 216,532
- Breach submission date
- 29 March 2024
- Submission year
- 2024
- Type of breach
- Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of breached information
- Network Server
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Mississippi (MS)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Mississippi by size
- 4th of 55
- Rank in 2024 nationally
- 82nd of 741
- Mississippi median filing
- 5,220 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- MS-20240329-delta-health-system
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Mississippi and in 2024
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 39 of the 55 Mississippi filings (71%) and on 83% of all filings submitted in 2024. Network Server is the most common location in the state, appearing on 55% of Mississippi filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 33% of Mississippi filings do involve one. At 216,532 individuals the breach is 41 times the Mississippi median filing of 5,220 and 54 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.
Mississippi's breach notification statute (Miss. Code Ann. 75-24-29) requires notice to affected residents without unreasonable delay. Its attorney general threshold: no AG notification requirement at any threshold. 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 216,532 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 $34.6M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $41.6M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Delta 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), UnitedHealthcare reported that an employee mailed the protected health information (PHI) of 3,215 individuals to the wrong recipients. The PHI involved demographic and treatment information. The CE notified HHS, affected individuals, and the media. In response to the breach, the CE implemented additional administrative safeguards.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
216,532 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
Upper boundIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$34.6M
216,532 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$41.6M
216,532 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Delta 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
Mississippi statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Mississippi: Miss. Code Ann. 75-24-29
- Notice to individuals
- Without unreasonable delay
- Attorney general threshold
- No AG notification requirement at any threshold
- Private right of action
- No: Statute expressly creates no private right of action
- Penalty
- Unfair trade practice; up to $10,000 per willful violation under the Consumer Protection Act
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
Mississippi filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Mississippi filings in 2024, topped up from other years where 2024 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Western Washington Medical Group | Healthcare Provider | 350,863 | 26 Oct 2023 | |||
| Bienville Orthopaedic Specialists LLC | Healthcare Provider | 242,986 | 5 Sep 2023 | |||
| HORNE, LLP | Business Associate | 170,052 | 13 Jan 2024 | |||
| Coastal Family Health Center, Inc | Healthcare Provider | 65,890 | 2 Jul 2021 | |||
| Spurwink Services, Inc. | Healthcare Provider | 27,332 | 9 Apr 2024 |
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 1045.
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.