Eight months after laptop theft, Oceans Acquisitions notifies patients

Strike 1: Storing PHI on inactive or terminated patients on a mobile device.
Strike 2: Leaving a laptop with unencrypted PHI in an unattended car.
Strike 3: Not knowing you had PHI on the stolen laptop.

If this was baseball, I’d call Oceans Acquisitions out. But it’s not, so…

As seen on TXheadlines.com: an explanation for the Oceans Acquisitions report to HHS. Apparently this is another case of a laptop with PHI being stolen from an employee’s car. Note that the theft was in April, 2015, but Oceans Acquisition did not realize the laptop contained PHI until “recently.” Again, as part of risk assessment and HIPAA compliance, entities need to know what data they are storing and where.

In December 2015, Oceans Acquisitions, Inc. began notifying patients in the Abilene area about a possible data security breach that may have resulted in exposure of a limited amount of protected health information (PHI). The potential exposure occurred when a laptop was stolen from an employee’s car. The laptop stored emails that potentially contained PHI such as names, dates of birth, medical record numbers, diagnoses, payer information and admission dates. No patient social security numbers or bank account information was included in the emails. Upon learning PHI may have been present on the device, Oceans immediately took steps to identify the individuals with the potential to be impacted. Although the laptop was stolen April 9, 2015, only recently, during an unrelated systems review did Oceans learn the device contained PHI. In May 2015, Oceans validated that all portable devices and laptops have encryption technology active and in use. While there is no indication the personal information has been acquired or used, free identity protection resources are being provided to individuals who may have been impacted. Because it is possible the PHI contained on the laptops may have been improperly accessed, federal and state law requires Oceans to notify potentially affected patients of this incident. This notice in print media is being provided as notification to individuals for whom Oceans has out-of-date contact information and therefore cannot be notified via letter. If you believe you have been affected, you should review your credit reports for accounts or creditor inquiries that you do not recognize. Individuals who believe they may have been impacted or who have questions can call a dedicated toll-free help line at (877) 747-5168.

Location: ReporterNews.com | Publication date: 02/05/16