Benjamin Woodard follows up on a situation I noted on this blog in 2013 involving medical records that were abandoned over a decade ago at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago:
Demolition crews this week began removing loads of old patient medical records from the vacant Edgewater Medical Center, a month after city inspectors criticized the lack of security at the building that was “vacant and open.”
Workers wearing respirators and brightly colored vests on Thursday moved wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of the often moldy, water-damaged patient records from the building’s interior and into an enclosed dumpster in the center’s alley at 5700 N. Ashland Ave.
Read more on DNAinfo Chicago, where Woodard quotes a contractor as suggesting that the records might fill six dumpsters. That’s a lot of records to have abandoned and inadequately secured since 2001. And since this all predates HITECH, we won’t see this one, either, on HHS’s public breach tool.