Breach filing
ArchivedMercy Health Love County Hospital and Clinic: 13,004 individuals, Sep 2017.
Mercy Health Love County Hospital and Clinic reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 20 September 2017. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Oklahoma and lists 13,004 individuals affected, which makes it the 24th largest of the 80 Oklahoma filings on the register and the 67th largest of the 358 filings submitted nationally in 2017. Among the 5 Oklahoma filings made in 2017 it ranks 2nd.
Individuals affected
13,004
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$2.08M
Method shown, not disclosed
Rank in OK
24th
of 80 Oklahoma filings
Rank in 2017
67th
of 358 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
- 13,004
- Breach submission date
- 20 September 2017
- Submission year
- 2017
- Type of breach
- Theft
- Location of breached information
- Laptop, Paper/Films
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Oklahoma (OK)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Oklahoma by size
- 24th of 80
- Rank in 2017 nationally
- 67th of 358
- Oklahoma median filing
- 3,849 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- OK-20170920-mercy-health-love-county-hospital-and-cl
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Oklahoma and in 2017
OCR classifies the incident as theft, with the breached information held in a laptop and paper records or films. Theft is the type recorded on 12 of the 80 Oklahoma filings (15%) and on 15% of all filings submitted in 2017. Laptop appears on 9% of Oklahoma filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 33% of Oklahoma filings do involve one. At 13,004 individuals the breach is 3.4 times the Oklahoma median filing of 3,849 and 3.3 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.
Oklahoma's breach notification statute (Okla. Stat. tit. 24, 161 et seq.) requires notice to affected residents without unreasonable delay. Its attorney general threshold: 500 or more Oklahoma 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 13,004 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 $2.08M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $2.50M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Mercy Health Love County Hospital and Clinic. For scale, IBM's 2026 average cost of a healthcare breach is $6.64M, so this filing models at 0.4 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 former workforce member impermissibly accessed two medical record storage facilities of the covered entity (CE), Mercy Health/Love County Hospital and Clinic, and stole patients' medical records and a laptop computer. The potentially affected protected health information (PHI) included the names, addresses, dates of birth, and social security numbers of approximately 38,218 individuals. As a result of the breach, the CE improved safeguards and updated its policies and procedures. Further, the CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions listed.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
13,004 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
ModelledIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$2.08M
13,004 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$2.50M
13,004 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Mercy Health Love County Hospital and Clinic 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
Oklahoma statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Oklahoma: Okla. Stat. tit. 24, 161 et seq.
amended by SB 626 (effective 1 January 2026)
- Notice to individuals
- Without unreasonable delay
- Attorney general threshold
- 500 or more Oklahoma residents (No later than 60 days after providing notice to residents)
- Private right of action
- No: No PROA; enforcement is exclusive to the Oklahoma Attorney General
- Penalty
- Up to $150,000 per breach; reduced or waived where reasonable safeguards are demonstrated
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
Oklahoma filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Oklahoma filings in 2017, topped up from other years where 2017 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oklahoma Department of Human Services | Health Plan | 47,000 | 5 Dec 2017 | |||
| LKM ENTERPRISES, INC. | Healthcare Provider | 3,400 | 1 Jun 2017 | |||
| University of Oklahoma, OU Physicians | Healthcare Provider | 1,637 | 4 Apr 2017 |
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 5094.
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.