CBC News reports:
A laptop with the unencrypted personal health information of 620,000 Albertans was stolen last September, Health Minister Fred Horne announced Wednesday.
The laptop contained the names, dates of birth, provincial health card numbers, billing codes and diagnostic codes of the individuals seen at Medicentres between May 2, 2011, and Sept. 10, 2013. The computer was stolen on Sept. 26.
Horne said that he was informed of the theft on Tuesday, when he received a letter from the vice-president of Medicentres Family Health Care Clinics.
Read more on CBC News
Medicentres is first disclosing this publicly to patients now, which is pretty outrageous, I think. Their notification letter, a copy of which is reproduced in CBC’s story, indicates that the laptop was stolen from an IT consultant. It does not explain why the IT consultant had data on 620,000 patients nor why the data were not encrypted.