Barrington Orthopedic Specials, Ltd in Illinois is notifying 1,009 patients following the theft of a laptop with protected health information. From their substitute notice on their web site:
Barrington Orthopedic Specialists, Ltd. takes patient privacy very seriously, and it is important to us that you are made fully aware of a potential privacy issue. We have learned that some patient’s personal information may have been compromised.
Following is a description of information regarding the breach.
Date of breach: Sometime during the period of August 14-18, 2015.
Date of discovery of breach: August 18, 2015. Since discovery of the breach we have been working on identifying the patients that were affected.
Information breached:
_x__ Name ____ Address ____ Phone Number ____Email address ____ Social Security Number ____ Driver’s License Number ____ State ID Number ____Financial Data _x__ Protected health information (PHI): EMG results and report. Other information breached: Patient’s Date of Birth.
How the breach occurred: A Laptop and EMG Machine were stolen from our transport vehicle.
The following measures are being undertaken to address the incident: Barrington Orthopedic Specialists, Ltd. has reported the theft to the police and they are investigating. We have also acquired additional equipment so that transportation of units is no longer necessary. Data sets will no longer be maintained on the laptops associated with the EMG machines. They will be maintained only on our internal server system. We are notifying all affected patients.Due to the limited information contained on the unit, we do not believe there is any financial identity risks as only name and birthdate and test results were breached.We regret that this incident occurred and want to assure you that we are reviewing and revising our procedures and practices to minimize the risk of recurrence.
Should you need any further information about this incident, please contact me.
Sincerely,
Thomas E. Flood
Executive Director of Operations