Akron Children's Hospital is notifying 7,664 patient families that a hard drive of back-up transport voice recordings – which contained personal information – has gone missing.
How many victims? 7,664.
What type of personal information? Names, ages, genders, birth dates, medical record numbers, locations, transfer times, physician names, and chief medical complaints.
What happened? A hard drive of back-up transport voice recordings – which contained personal information – has gone missing.
What was the response? Akron Children's Hospital has taken steps to ensure all mobile devices are encrypted, and transport voice recordings are no longer being stored on mobile devices. All potentially affected patient families are being notified.
Details: The hard drive – which was locked in a secure area of the hospital's Akron campus – was discovered missing on June 30. It contained voice recordings of communications between dispatchers and medical staff at community hospitals, physician offices and Akron Children's emergency departments prior to or during the transport of patients between Sept. 18, 2014, and June 3.
Quote: “We have no evidence the recordings have been misused or accessed,” a notification posted to the Akron Children's Hospital website said. “The recordings are not searchable and no other hospital or physician office data is affected. We do not believe that patients are at risk for identity theft.”
Source: akronchildrens.org, “Hospital notifies patients of lost recordings,” Aug. 25, 2015; akronchildrens.org, “Notice to Patients Regarding Lost Recordings,” Aug. 25, 2015.
