PORTLAND, Ore. – Discs containing 18 years worth of personal information on 365,000 Providence Home Services patients have been stolen from an employee’s car. The data includes patient names, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers and medical diagnoses.
Letters have been mailed to all affected patients warning them that their information had been stolen. Patients are being encouraged to register with credit bureaus to check on any suspicious account activity.
The discs, which were stolen Dec. 31, were left in an employee’s vehicle overnight. Providence Home Services’ policy required that one employee take backup copies of patient records home every evening. This was a security measure designed to protect the records. Since the theft, however, the company has revised its data backup policy.
Authorities do not yet know if any of the stolen data has been used for identity theft. The police have no suspects.
