Breach filing
ArchivedMemorial Hospital at Gulfport: 30,642 individuals, Feb 2019.
Memorial Hospital at Gulfport reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 15 February 2019. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Mississippi and lists 30,642 individuals affected, which makes it the 11th largest of the 55 Mississippi filings on the register and the 83rd largest of the 511 filings submitted nationally in 2019. Among the 3 Mississippi filings made in 2019 it ranks 1st.
Individuals affected
30,642
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$4.90M
Method shown, not disclosed
Rank in MS
11th
of 55 Mississippi filings
Rank in 2019
83rd
of 511 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
- 30,642
- Breach submission date
- 15 February 2019
- Submission year
- 2019
- Type of breach
- Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of breached information
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Mississippi (MS)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Mississippi by size
- 11th of 55
- Rank in 2019 nationally
- 83rd of 511
- Mississippi median filing
- 5,220 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- MS-20190215-memorial-hospital-at-gulfport
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Mississippi and in 2019
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 39 of the 55 Mississippi filings (71%) and on 61% of all filings submitted in 2019. Email appears on 25% of Mississippi filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 33% of Mississippi filings do involve one. At 30,642 individuals the breach is 5.9 times the Mississippi median filing of 5,220 and 7.7 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.
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 30,642 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 $4.90M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $5.88M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Memorial Hospital at Gulfport. For scale, IBM's 2026 average cost of a healthcare breach is $6.64M, so this filing models at 0.9 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 December 4, 2018 an employee in the medical records department responded to a phishing email and provided their username and password credentials. On December 6, 2018, a routine system audit log uncovered nine outside logins to the covered entity's system from an unauthorized individual who may have accessed 30,642 patient's protected health information (PHI), including demographic and clinical information. IT personnel secured the email account and investigated the emails within the compromised account. Following the incident, the CE implemented a multi-factor authentication requirement and trained staff on phishing. On February 15, 2019, the CE provided breach notification to HHS, the affected individuals, and to the media. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions listed above.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
30,642 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
ModelledIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$4.90M
30,642 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$5.88M
30,642 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Memorial Hospital at Gulfport 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 2019, topped up from other years where 2019 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OCH Regional Medical Center, MS | Healthcare Provider | 51,266 | 11 Mar 2025 | |||
| Mississippi State Department of Health | Healthcare Provider | 30,799 | 26 Mar 2018 | |||
| Brookhaven ENT Allergy and Facial SurgeryOpen | Healthcare Provider | 30,403 | 24 Jul 2026 | |||
| GULFPORT ANESTHESIA SERVICES, PA | Healthcare Provider | 20,000 | 26 Mar 2019 | |||
| Gary Smith and assoc inc DBA gary smith agency | Health Plan | 2,000 | 4 Oct 2019 |
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 4574.
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.