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Posts Tagged ‘Cook County Illinois’

Patient Information stolen from Hospital

August 24th, 2010

Laptop

In two separate incidents, laptops containing patient information were stolen from University of Kentucky hospital, UK and from Cook County Health and Hospital.

Record of 2027 patients was stolen from the UK hospital between June 18 and June 21. The security breach has prompted the hospital authorities to issue a notification to the affected people. The information included patient names, dates of birth, diagnoses, mothers’ names and, in some cases, Social Security numbers of mothers in the Newborn Screening Program.

The stolen laptop was stored in a locked private office and was not having any computer protection software installed. The theft has been reported to the police and the investigation is going on.

Meanwhile, in another incident at Cook County Health and Hospital, a laptop was stolen on June 1 but it was reported only recently because of an ongoing internal investigation. The computer contained personal information of 7,000 Cook County health system patients.

Though, the investigation has determined the computer to be password protected, still the information within it may have been deleted. However, due to the uncertainty, officials have been reportedly notifying patients that their information may have been compromised. Guererro, meanwhile, says that he hasn’t seen evidence that any of the information has been accessed or distributed.

How Alertsec Xpress Would Have Helped

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