Associated Press reports that the personal information of all licensed medical doctors in Puerto Rico was acquired in a recent hack. They report that since the hack, doctors have been getting harassing emails, but it’s not clear from their reporting as to what information was accessed or acquired in the intrusion, other than the statement from Puerto Rico’s Association of Surgeons [I think AP meant College of Physicians and Surgeons – Dissent] that whoever stole the information can engage in identity theft and submit fake prescriptions.
The AP also did not report how many physicians had data in the database, but another AP report in April 2013 noted that the number of doctors in Puerto Rico had dropped from 11,397 to 9,950, according to the island’s Medical Licensing and Studies Board. I cannot find any website for the College of Physicians and Surgeons for Puerto Rico.
If anyone has additional information on this breach, please let me know.
Updated: With the clarity that extra caffeine brings, it dawned on me this morning that even if there are less than 10,000 physicians currently, we don’t know how far back their database goes, and there might be many more individuals whose data were in there.