Community Health Systems Reports Data Breach

Community Health Systems Inc. (CHS), which owns four hospitals in the midstate Pennsylvania, said today in a regulatory filing that its computer network was the target of an external criminal cyberattack that affected approximately 4.5 million patients.

CHS believes the attack occurred in April and June of this year and, according to the filing, confirmed the attack in July. The data transferred was non-medical patient identification data related to the company’s physician practice operations, the filing says, and the 4.5 million people are those who, in the last five years, were referred for or received services . . .