Thief nabs backup personal data on 365,000 WA, OR patients from car

[mandy]

About 365,000 hospice and home health care patients in Oregon and Washington are being notified about the theft of computer backup data disks and tapes late last month that included personal information and confidential medical records.

Providence Home Services, a division of Seattle-based Providence Health Systems, said the records and other data were on several disks and tapes stolen from the car of a Providence employee at his home...

The information on the disks and tapes included names, addresses, dates of birth, physicians’ names, insurance data, diagnoses, prescriptions and some lab results. For approximately 250,000 of the patients, Social Security numbers were on the records, according to the health system. Some of the records also included patient financial information.

full article: http://www.computerworld.com/securitytop...01,00.html

[bargainbloodhound]

This one deserves a few eye rolls.  : : : and a few  :blinkie: :blinkie: :blinkie: but the sad fact  is this sort of data breach caused by sheer stupidity (on both the employee's and company's part) is nothing that hasn't happened many times before.  A few more eye rolls are in order  : : :

[rose]

The tapes and disks were taken home by the employee as part of a backup protocol that sent them off-site to protect them against loss from fires or other disasters. That practice, which was only used by the home health care division of the hospital system, has since been stopped,

On the eighth day, Morons were created.