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Medical Records Briefing Strategies for Health Care Compliance

National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials acknowledged that a laptop computer stolen in February contained the Social Security numbers of more than 1,200 health study participants, according to an April 10 article in The Washington Post. Rep. Joe Barton, (R-TX) says he is among the approximately 3,000 heart patients whose medical information was on an unencrypted government laptop computer that was stolen from the car trunk of a NIH researcher, according to an article in the paper’s April 3 edition. He has sought an investigation of the computer theft and the agency’s handling of the affair, according to the newspaper.

NIH did not notify patients of the theft until the last week of March. The agency said it delayed notifying affected patients because of concerns that this would cause undue alarm, the paper reported March 24. The theft potentially exposed seven years of clinical trial data, including names, diagnoses, and details of heart scans.

The computer was unencrypted, a violation of federal law, according to a March 25 article in The Washington Post, Rep. John Dingell, (D-MI) chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, criticized NIH for its failure to delay sending letters notifying patients of the February 23 theft until March 20. “The stunning failure to act … raises troubling questions,” he told the paper.

Click on the following links to read The Washington Post articles: April 10, April 3, March 25, March 24.