South Shore Hospital Reports Loss of Confidential Data- 800,000 Private Records at Risk

Just a week after Health Net faced penalty for a major security breach, another similar incident has been reported by the South Shore Hospital in Weymouth Massachusetts, USA. Authorities say that computer files containing personal information of nearly 800,000 people were lost when they were being shipped to a contractor for destruction.

Information on the files included people’s names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, medical record numbers, patient numbers, health plan information, dates of service, and information on diagnoses and treatments. It had data on patients, employees, doctors, volunteers, donors, vendors, and other business partners and covered records over a 14-year time span.

The growing frequency of these incidents only reinforces the pressing need to secure end-point devices and comply with HIPAA and other regulations. Hospitals and institutions in possession of confidential data should adopt a cloud-based approach to storing records. Only this can help prevent such incidents of massive security breach and data loss.

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