On Monday, officials at South Shore Hospital in Massachusetts announced that the personal information of about 800,000 individuals could be missing after an off-site contractor responsible for destroying the computer files did not receive all of them, the Boston Globe reports.
Hospital officials said that the files were shipped to be destroyed on Feb. 26 because the hospital no longer used the format in which the files were stored.
When the hospital did not receive confirmation that the contractor had received the files, it questioned the contractor in June and found that only some of the files had been received and destroyed (Finucane/Lazar, Boston Globe, 7/20).
Details of the Affected Data
The data include names, Social Security numbers, addresses, diagnoses and treatments of donors, employees, patients, vendors and volunteers. The files also may contain credit card and bank account information.
However, hospital officials said that the files cannot be accessed without specialized software, hardware and technical capabilities.
Follow-Up Action
South Shore has launched an investigation and notified state and federal health agencies, as well as the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office (McConville, Boston Herald, 7/20).