On the evening of July 11th, 69,246 patients of North East Medical Services (NEMS) in San Francisco had their protected health information stolen because an employee left their work laptop with unencrypted PHI in the trunk of their car. The theft was reported to the police and the employee reset the login and password remotely, but the theft was not reported to NEMS until Monday, July 13.
According to the non-profit community health center’s notification to the state, spreadsheets on the laptop included one or more of the following data types for each patient: name, date of birth, gender, contact information, pay/insurer, and what they describe as “limited personal health information” such as diagnosis, treatment, medications, test results, and appointment. In addition, although the practice did not directly collect/store Social Security Numbers, for 28 of the patients, SSN was embedded in their insurance account number. Those 28 patients were offered identity theft protection services.
As of today’s date, NEMS expects to have encrypted all laptops. Why the laptops weren’t already encrypted was not explained in their notification to the state. NEMS’s Privacy Officer notes that all employees are currently being re-trained on HIPAA policies and security rule safeguards.
Notification letters to affected patients were mailed out today, and NEMS indicates that they have set up a Privacy Hotline for concerned patients to call. According to their notification to the state, they also submitted a press release today, but I’ve been unable to locate it so far, and I do not see any notice on their web site. This post will be updated when their press release appears.