Breach filing
ArchivedSouth Sunflower County Hospital: 19,000 individuals, Feb 2015.
South Sunflower County Hospital reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 4 February 2015. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Mississippi and lists 19,000 individuals affected, which makes it the 17th largest of the 55 Mississippi filings on the register and the 31st largest of the 270 filings submitted nationally in 2015. Among the 2 Mississippi filings made in 2015 it ranks 1st.
Individuals affected
19,000
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$3.04M
Method shown, not disclosed
Rank in MS
17th
of 55 Mississippi filings
Rank in 2015
31st
of 270 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
- 19,000
- Breach submission date
- 4 February 2015
- Submission year
- 2015
- Type of breach
- Improper Disposal
- Location of breached information
- Paper/Films
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Mississippi (MS)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Mississippi by size
- 17th of 55
- Rank in 2015 nationally
- 31st of 270
- Mississippi median filing
- 5,220 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- MS-20150204-south-sunflower-county-hospital
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Mississippi and in 2015
OCR classifies the incident as improper disposal, with the breached information held in paper records or films. Improper Disposal is the type recorded on 1 of the 55 Mississippi filings (2%) and on 2% of all filings submitted in 2015. Paper/Films appears on 5% of Mississippi filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 33% of Mississippi filings do involve one. At 19,000 individuals the breach is 3.6 times the Mississippi median filing of 5,220 and 4.8 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 19,000 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 $3.04M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $3.65M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by South Sunflower County Hospital. For scale, IBM's 2026 average cost of a healthcare breach is $6.64M, so this filing models at 0.5 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.
A local merchant sent a package with shredded documents containing protected health information (PHI) from the covered entity (CE), South Sunflower County Hospital, used as packing material. The PHI included the dates of service, providers' names, diagnoses, patients' names, social security numbers, and dates of birth of 19,345 individuals. The CE retrieved the remaining shredded documents and stored them in a locked room with limited access. The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. The CE investigated and modified its policies and procedures. It contracted with a document shredding company to destroy all hospital paper waste containing PHI and initiated a process to convert health records to an electronic format. As a result of the investigation, OCR reviewed the CE's HIPAA policies and procedures.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
19,000 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
ModelledIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$3.04M
19,000 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$3.65M
19,000 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by South Sunflower County Hospital 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 2015, topped up from other years where 2015 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GULFPORT ANESTHESIA SERVICES, PA | Healthcare Provider | 20,000 | 26 Mar 2019 | |||
| Mississippi Children's Home Society, CARES Center, Inc., Mississippi Children's Home Services, Inc., d.b.a. Canopy Children's Solutions | Healthcare Provider | 19,791 | 2 Jun 2023 | |||
| Medical Practice Solutions | Business Associate | 16,737 | 18 Oct 2021 | |||
| Cadence Bank | Business Associate | 13,862 | 27 Oct 2023 | |||
| Merit Health Northwest Mississippi | Healthcare Provider | 846 | 26 Aug 2015 |
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 5931.
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.