Breach filing
ArchivedBoys Town National Research Hospital: 105,309 individuals, Jul 2018.
Boys Town National Research Hospital reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 20 July 2018. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Nebraska and lists 105,309 individuals affected, which makes it the 7th largest of the 60 Nebraska filings on the register and the 23rd largest of the 369 filings submitted nationally in 2018. Among the 5 Nebraska filings made in 2018 it ranks 1st.
Individuals affected
105,309
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$16.8M
Upper bound, method shown
Rank in NE
7th
of 60 Nebraska filings
Rank in 2018
23rd
of 369 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
- 105,309
- Breach submission date
- 20 July 2018
- Submission year
- 2018
- Type of breach
- Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of breached information
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Nebraska (NE)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Nebraska by size
- 7th of 60
- Rank in 2018 nationally
- 23rd of 369
- Nebraska median filing
- 3,000 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- NE-20180720-boys-town-national-research-hospital
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Nebraska and in 2018
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 60 Nebraska filings (65%) and on 45% of all filings submitted in 2018. Email appears on 28% of Nebraska filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 23% of Nebraska filings do involve one. At 105,309 individuals the breach is 35 times the Nebraska median filing of 3,000 and 26 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.
Nebraska's breach notification statute (Neb. Rev. Stat. 87-801 et seq.) requires notice to affected residents as soon as possible and without unreasonable delay. Its attorney general threshold: all breaches affecting Nebraska 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 105,309 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 $16.8M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $20.2M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Boys Town National Research Hospital. 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), Boys Town National Research Hospital, reported that an employee was the victim of an email phishing scheme that affected the protected health information (PHI) of approximately 105,309 individuals. The PHI involved included names, addresses, dates of birth, drivers' license information, passport information, Social Security numbers, health insurance information, financial information, clinical information, and other demographic information. The CE notified HHS, affected individuals, the media, and established a dedicated call center for questions or concerns. The CE also offered complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft protection services for affected individuals. In its mitigation efforts, the CE implemented additional administrative, technical, and security safeguards to better protect its PHI and retrained its staff on the proper methods of identifying fraudulent email communications. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions noted.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
105,309 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
Upper boundIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$16.8M
105,309 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$20.2M
105,309 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Boys Town National Research 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
Nebraska statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Nebraska: Neb. Rev. Stat. 87-801 et seq.
Financial Data Protection and Consumer Notification of Data Security Breach Act
- Notice to individuals
- As soon as possible and without unreasonable delay
- Attorney general threshold
- All breaches affecting Nebraska residents (At the same time as affected individuals)
- Private right of action
- No: Only the Nebraska Attorney General may enforce
- Penalty
- Up to $25,000 per 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
Nebraska filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Nebraska filings in 2018, topped up from other years where 2018 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Signature Performance, Inc. | Business Associate | 130,228 | 10 Jun 2024 | |||
| United of Omaha Life Insurance Company | Health Plan | 107,894 | 26 Jul 2024 | |||
| Central District Health Department of NebraskaOpen | Healthcare Provider | 58,519 | 1 Apr 2025 | |||
| Prairie Fields Family Medicine, PC | Healthcare Provider | 6,450 | 30 Nov 2018 | |||
| Boys Town National Research Hospital | not given | 2,182 | 9 May 2018 |
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 4784.
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.