There’s an update to a case involving the theft of 40,000 patients’ records from a Jersey City physician’s shed.
Sudip Bhattacharya reports:
The Jersey City doctor’s office where thousands of medical records were recently stolen was completely empty this afternoon and appears to be in the midst of a renovation.
The first floor of Dr. Nisar A. Quraishi’s office on Chopin Court, where cops say some 40,000 patients’ medical records were stolen from a storage shed, is a gutted, empty space with exposed beams and no carpet.
Read more on NJ.com.
Because NJ.com’s two reports both noted the doctor’s affiliation with NYU Langone, PHIprivacy.net reached out to them to inquire whether the stolen records included their patients. In response, a spokesperson sent this statement:
The patient records involved were from Dr. Quraishi’s private practice that closed several years ago and therefore do not include any treatments provided by him since his employment with NYU Langone as of January 2014. The medical records of patients who were treated at NYU Langone by Dr. Quraishi are not part of the breach in question.
If, as NYU’s statement suggests, the physician’s private practice closed “several years ago,” and his Jersey City office location is empty, that raises yet even more questions about the doctor’s physical security and storage of patient records.
Off-site secure storage costs money, yes, but I wonder what this breach will cost Dr. Quraishi. I suspect he’s really going to regret not using another storage strategy.