24,000 UNC Health Care patients affected by potential security breach

John Murawski reports:

UNC Health Care is notifying 24,000 patients about a potential security breach at a UNC dermatology practice in Burlington.

UNC said Friday that personal patient information was contained on a hard drive of a laptop computer that was stolen from UNC Dermatology & Skin Cancer Center in October. The absence of the computer was discovered only recently, prompting alerts to patients as required by federal law governing patient privacy protections, as well as by the N.C. Identity Theft Act.