Baptist Medical Center South (“Baptist South”) is committed to protecting the security and con dentiality of our patients’ information. Regrettably, this notice concerns an incident involving some of that information.
On May 18, 2017, Baptist South learned that a backup hard drive used for EEG testing was missing from an EEG room. We immediately began an investigation, including a thorough review of the information that may have been contained on the hard drive. At this time we have not been able to determine whether the hard drive had been taken, borrowed, or accidentally discarded. Special software would be required to read the information on the hard drive, which may have included patients’ names, birth dates, medical record numbers, physicians’ orders, diagnoses, reasons for study, room numbers, and images taken during the test. The information on the backup drive did not include social security numbers or nancial data.
This incident does not affect all patients at Baptist South but only certain patients who received EEG testing at Baptist South in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
We do not have any indication that the information on the hard drive has been accessed or misused. However, in an abundance of caution on June 30, 2017, we sent letters to
all affected patients and have established a dedicated call center to answer patients’ questions. If you believe you are affected but do not receive a letter by July 20, 2017, please call 1.800.694.9245 from 9 am to 9 pm Eastern Time, Monday through Friday.
We deeply regret any inconvenience or concern this may cause our patients. To help prevent something like this from happening in the future, we have reinforced and enhanced our current security practices along with re-educating staff in EEG.
SOURCE: Baptist South Medical Center
Note: According to their report to HHS, this incident impacted 531 patients.