PLATTEVILLE — Southwest Health notified its patients last week that a data breach Jan. 11 may have released personal medical information.

Although Southwest Health’s website says it “has no evidence of the misuse of any potentially affected individual’s information,” the hospital is offering its patients free enrollment in an identity protection service for the next year. 

The data breach was reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which, the letter said, “identified and confiscated” data servers involved in the data breach. 

Receiving the Southwest Health letter “does not mean that you are or will be a victim of identity theft,” according to the website for the identity protection service. 

The five-month investigation into the data breach with cybersecurity experts determined that “certain personal information may have been accessed or acquired without authorization.” 

The breached information may have involved patient names and “clinical or treatment information,” the letter said. 

The FBI Milwaukee office did not return an email from The Journal about the results of the data breach investigation as of Monday afternoon. 

The Southwest Health letter recommends that patients review their account statements and credit reports and notify law enforcement and their financial institutions in case of “suspicious activity.” The letter also recommends considering a fraud alert on patients’ credit report, which would be for at least 90 days, and a security freeze on their credit file, which could be for up to one year. 

Southwest Health is also offering free enrollment in the identity protection service provided by IDX of Portland, Ore., including up to $1 million in identity theft insurance, identity recovery services, single-bureau credit monitoring, and Dark Web monitoring of sales of such “unique identifers” as email addresses and Social Security, bank account, medical identification, driver’s license, credit and debit card and passport numbers.

Patients with children who are also Southwest Health patients can use TransUnion’s secure online form to submit child information to determine if a credit file was created. 

The webpage is at https://www.transunion.com/fraud-victim-resources.

Family members of patients who have died also are being offered resolution assistance in case of fraudulent activity. 

The deadline to sign up for the IDX service is Oct. 5. 

More information from IDX is available at https://response.idx.us/

southwesthealth/ or by calling 1-833-423-2983. 

More information from Southwest Health is available by going to https://www.southwesthealth.org/

incident-report/.