Brie Zeitner of the Plain Dealer reports from Cleveland:
More than 7,100 University Hospitals patients received notification by mail this week that their protected personal medical information was potentially exposed after a third-party contractor upgrading their computer system lost a hard drive containing physician office data.
Someone stole the hard drive from the car of one of the vendor’s employees, according to the letter. UH was informed of the theft Aug. 8, and the hospital system has been determining the exact information that was on the drive since then, said hospital spokeswoman Janice Guhl.
Read more on Cleveland.com. Fox8 adds that the drive was used as a backup during the upgrade and may have contained the patients’ “names, home addresses, dates of birth, medical record numbers, insurance provider information and health information about specific patient treatment.”
A “limited number” of Social Security numbers were possibly exposed as well, according to a hospital spokesperson.
At the time of this posting, this does not appear to be any notice linked from UH’s home page.