88,000 Patients Exposed to Identity Theft
Hardware containing personal information on about 88,000 patients of the Staten Island University Hospital has been stolen last year in December.
According to Silive.com, after four months of investigations that have led to no arrest, the hospital administrators are now starting to send letter to patients who are currently exposed to identity theft threats. The stolen desktop computer and the backup hard drive stolen from one of the hospital’s finance offices contained patients’ names, Social Security and health insurance numbers.
“The hospital is in the process of issuing a letter of information to each patient involved in which one year of free credit monitoring is being offered,” said a hospital statement released yesterday afternoon by spokeswoman Arleen Ryback. The time frame for when patients whose information was included in the data were treated was not immediately known.
Ms. Ryback said no medical records were included in the files, but wouldn’t speculate why SIUH waited so long to notify people.
