Tentative $65M settlement reached after cyberattack

A case involving a medical record breach at Lehigh Valley Health Network(LVHN)， an independent healthcare network based in Pennsylvania, has been settled for a record-breaking $65 M.

Lehigh Valley Health Network has agreed to a tentative $65 million settlement with patients who had personal information released over the internet by hackers. Some of those patients had nude photos posted online, photos characterized by the health network as “clinical images of patients during treatment.”

Philadelphia law firm Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky called the settlement the largest of its kind, on a per-patient basis, in a healthcare data breach-ransomware case.

The firm sued Lehigh Valley Health Network in March 2023 on behalf of 135,000 patients and employees of the health system, more than 600 of whom had their clinical photos posted on the internet, according to the firm’s news release.