Jan Jarvis reports:
In June, employees at a Fort Worth allergy clinic discovered that the office door had been kicked in and four computers containing patients’ personal information including Social Security numbers and birth dates had been stolen.
This week Fort Worth Allergy and Asthma Associates spent $15,000 mailing letters notifying the clinic’s 25,000 patients of the burglary. The stolen computer database also contained patient’s addresses and diagnoses, Dr. Robert Rogers said.
“In terms of sensitive clinical information that could be taken, we’re an allergy clinic so I don’t think there was anything embarrassing taken,” he said. “It’s bad enough that they did get identity information like Social Security numbers.”
Read more in the Star-Telegram
The physician’s pouting that the notification process cost more than replacement computers made me laugh. Yeah, it did, without a doubt. And how much would a lawsuit from someone who wasn’t notified whose identify was stolen because of the stolen information have cost? Compliance isn’t cheap, by any stretch
This is one of those times when a provider has done everything they reasonably can to protect the information, and they still lose control of it. Sometimes it just happens, and you can’t prevent it. Publically whining about it doesn’t make it any better, and it just makes you look bad.