Contractor's stolen laptop impacts 18K patients
The theft of five laptops from a hospital's contractor has put patient data at risk.
Information of patients at may have been compromised after the left of laptops from a contractor's office.
The contractor, Global Care Delivery, processes and collects payments that health insurance providers owe to hospitals, and works with North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in New York. The Dallas-based company had the laptops stolen from its offices on or about Sept. 2, 2014. The company said it notified law enforcement about the theft, but the laptops were not recovered.
Information on the laptops included patient names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and information pertaining to medical treatment. About 18,000 patients were notified about the potential breach. The health system will offer affected patients free credit monitoring for a year.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.