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Security breaches leave patient info exposed

Healthcare Security Weekly, February 19, 2007

Security problems in which hospitals have lost sensitive computerized data on tens of thousands of patients continue to make the news. For the second time in a week, a Maryland hospital has reported losing computerized data on more than 100,000 people.

St. Mary's Hospital in Leonardtown notified as many as 130,000 current and former patients that a laptop computer with personal information was stolen from the hospital in December, reported the Associated Press (AP).

That followed on the heels of a breach at Johns Hopkins where officials reported the loss of thousands of employee and patient records. The laptop, used to register patients as they came in for treatment, was taken from a treatment area that the public could generally access without a security check, the AP reported.

To follow up on an incident reported on last week, the Department of Veterans Affairs began notifying 1.8 million veterans and doctors that their personal and business information could be on a portable hard drive that has been missing from an Alabama hospital for nearly three weeks, according to news reports. The hard drive may have contained Social Security numbers and other personal information from about 535,000 people and billing information on 1.3 million physicians nationwide, the VA said. That's more than 37 times more people than initially believed were affected.

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