Michele McCormack of CBS reports:
The Medical College of Wisconsin is contacting hundreds of people after a patient privacy breach.
A spokesperson says a document containing private information on approximately 400 patients and a laptop with information on one patient were stolen.
It happened when somebody broke into a doctor’s car.
There is no statement that I can find on MCW’s web site, but the news report includes their statement:
“The Medical College of Wisconsin is committed to safeguarding the privacy of our patients’ healthcare information.
Firm policies are in place prohibiting the downloading of patient information to portable media, as well as the secured transport of documents containing patient information.
A violation of these policies occurred on February 15, 2015, resulting in the theft of a document containing private information on approximately 400 patients, as well as information stored on a laptop computer pertaining to one patient.
We sincerely regret that this unfortunate event occurred.
Impacted patients are being contacted and we have taken steps to prevent this type of event from reoccurring.
We want to assure our community that the Medical College of Wisconsin takes incidents such as this very seriously and individuals who violate our privacy policies are subject to disciplinary action.”
A copy of MCW’s policy on encryption and the use of mobile devices can be found here.