Breach filing
ArchivedCommunity Mercy Health Partners: 113,528 individuals, Jan 2016.
Community Mercy Health Partners reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 25 January 2016. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Ohio and lists 113,528 individuals affected, which makes it the 20th largest of the 276 Ohio filings on the register and the 14th largest of the 328 filings submitted nationally in 2016. Among the 13 Ohio filings made in 2016 it ranks 2nd.
Individuals affected
113,528
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$18.2M
Upper bound, method shown
Rank in OH
20th
of 276 Ohio filings
Rank in 2016
14th
of 328 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
- 113,528
- Breach submission date
- 25 January 2016
- Submission year
- 2016
- Type of breach
- Improper Disposal
- Location of breached information
- Paper/Films
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Ohio (OH)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Ohio by size
- 20th of 276
- Rank in 2016 nationally
- 14th of 328
- Ohio median filing
- 2,763 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- OH-20160125-community-mercy-health-partners
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Ohio and in 2016
OCR classifies the incident as improper disposal, with the breached information held in paper records or films. Improper Disposal is the type recorded on 8 of the 276 Ohio filings (3%) and on 2% of all filings submitted in 2016. Paper/Films appears on 17% of Ohio filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 29% of Ohio filings do involve one. At 113,528 individuals the breach is 41 times the Ohio median filing of 2,763 and 28 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.
Ohio's breach notification statute (Ohio Rev. Code 1349.19) requires notice to affected residents within 45 days of discovery or notification of a breach. Its attorney general threshold: no direct AG requirement (reporting agencies at more than 1,000 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 113,528 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 $18.2M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $21.8M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Community Mercy Health Partners. 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.
Community Mercy Health Partners, the covered entity, (the CE) reported that law enforcement officials found paper records belonging to the CE in a dumpster. The breach affected 113,528 individuals. The information consisted of records related to lab studies performed at the CE and included demographic and clinical information such as patient names, addresses, dates of birth, driver's license information, social security numbers, diagnosis and condition information, lab results, medications and other treatment information. The CE responded to the breach by conducting an investigation to determine the cause of the breach; providing notice to those affected by the breach and providing substitute notice on its website; and offering free credit monitoring to individuals whose social security numbers or financial information may have been compromised by the breach. The CE took voluntary action to dismiss the subcontractor involved in the breach from all of its projects; re-educating the Property Contractor involved in the breach about business associate agreements and reiterating that training on the handling, storage, and disposal of PHI is required before each project begins; re-educating laboratory leaders and staff on records retention; immediately reducing the number of remaining records slated for long-term storage in accordance with its records retention and disposal policies; and implementing new internal controls to aid in the mitigation of risk. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions noted above.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
113,528 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
Upper boundIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$18.2M
113,528 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$21.8M
113,528 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Community Mercy Health Partners 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
Ohio statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Ohio: Ohio Rev. Code 1349.19
- Notice to individuals
- Within 45 days of discovery or notification of a breach
- Attorney general threshold
- No direct AG requirement (reporting agencies at more than 1,000 residents)
- Private right of action
- No: No direct individual lawsuits; AG may investigate under ORC 1349.191
- Penalty
- Escalating civil penalties up to $10,000 per day for intentional or reckless non-compliance
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
Ohio filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Ohio filings in 2016, topped up from other years where 2016 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central Ohio Urology Group, Inc. | Healthcare Provider | 300,000 | 23 Sep 2016 | |||
| Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services | Healthcare Provider | 59,000 | 22 Apr 2016 | |||
| Mayfield Clinic Inc | Healthcare Provider | 23,341 | 23 Apr 2016 |
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 5670.
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.