Three of the top six "most significant" data breaches this year involved stolen patient health data, according to a report by the consumer advocacy group Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Modern Healthcare reports.
Report Details
In 2011, PRC identified 535 breaches involving a combined 30.4 million sensitive records.
The organization looked at breaches of records that contained Social Security numbers, drivers license numbers, financial account information and medical data (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 12/19).
Health Data Breaches
The three health data breaches that made PRC's list of the six most significant data breaches in 2011 took place at:
- Sutter Health, where a company-issued computer was stolen from Sutter's Medication Foundation offices, exposing the health data of more than 4 million patients;
- Health Net, where nine servers containing personal information on more than 1.9 million current and former members were misplaced; and
- Tricare Management Activity and Science Applications International Corporation, where backup tapes containing data on up to 4.9 million patients were stolen from an employee's car (Bouchard, Healthcare IT News, 12/19).
Overall, the three health data breaches involved nearly 11 million patient records (Modern Healthcare, 12/19).