Ricardo Torres reports:
A lab technician at the Children’s Heart Center Nevada who had access to patient files containing personal information was arrested two months ago on suspicion of identity theft, the center’s attorney said Friday.
Read more on the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
CHCN issued a statement on their website today that says, in part:
Children’s Heart Center is notifying certain patients and responsible parties of a recent incident that may affect the security of their protected health information.
On February 3, 2015, a Children’s Heart Center lab technician was arrested on suspicion of identity theft. Upon this individual’s arrest, Children’s Heart Center launched an investigation to determine what protected health information this employee had, or may have had, access to during her employment. Third-party forensics investigators were retained to assist in this investigation. While this investigation is ongoing, it has been determined this employee may have accessed certain patient files during her employment that contained patient name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, parent/legal guardian name, medical insurance information, treatment information and diagnosis information. A subset of these files contained the name of the patient’s parent or legal guardian, as well as the parent/legal guardian’s Social Security number, date of birth, and medical insurance information.
The Children’s Heart Center continues to cooperate with law enforcement’s investigation into this matter, which is also ongoing. This employee was terminated and the employee has been incarcerated since the February 3, 2015, arrest. The Children’s Heart Center has provided additional instruction to its staff on protecting patient and responsible party information from unauthorized access. The Children’s Heart Center is providing notice of this incident, and helpful information on how to protect against identity theft and fraud, to all patients and responsible parties whose information may have been accessed by this individual. To help protect the protected health information of all individuals who may be impacted, the Children’s Heart Center is also offering access to complimentary credit monitoring and fraud resolution services through Experian.
Read the full notice on their site. So far, they do not seem to have disclosed the number of patients being notified.
Update of April 15: The incident was reported to HHS as affecting 8, 791.