Officials have confirmed that personal information for 113 Beebe Medical Center patients was stolen from an employee’s vehicle in Florida.
According to Beebe Vice President of Corporate Affairs Wally Hudson, the employee took home a financial statement with patients’ names and Medicare numbers, often the same as a social security number, with the intention of working with it prior to leaving for a family vacation. The information on the report is considered protected health information, he said.
The document was unintentionally packed in the vehicle, he said. It was stolen from the employee’s locked car on the return trip home.
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Additional details on this breach can be found on WBOC.
Updated 3-16: Joseph Goedert has an interesting detail on this incident:
The hospital learned of the theft on Jan. 4. A spokesperson told the newspaper that the hospital waited seven weeks to notify patients, in part, because the chief compliance officer was on a family related leave of absence for a month. The hospital is offering affected patients a year of free credit monitoring services.