Health Information Management

News team discovers documents containing PHI near dumpster

HIPAA Weekly Advisor, March 28, 2005

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On the ground behind a dumpster at Guadalupe Medical Center, a Las Vegas news team discovered 40 pages worth of documents containing PHI of the center's patients, according to klas-tv.com. The documents had information such as patient names, Social Security numbers, and procedures.

The medical center claims this was a "huge misunderstanding" and an isolated incident. According to an attorney for Guadalupe Medical Center, a courier transporting the documents from another office operated by the same company dropped the files.

The medical center, which asked the news team to return the files, plans to shred them properly as it does all its documents.



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