Midland Memorial Hospital investigating potential data breach of records left unsecured at physician's home

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Midland (Texas) Memorial Hospital is notifying patients of a potential breach after learning a former physician left patient information unsecured at a private residence.

Mario Gross, MD, the physician at whose home the patient records were left accessible, previously had privileges at Midland Memorial Hospital. Dr. Gross reportedly "left patient information in his private residence, causing the information to be accessible to certain members of the public for a limited period of time," according to a hospital statement.

According to HHS' Office for Civil Rights data breach notification portal, 1,468 patients were affected by the incident.

Potentially compromised information includes names, addresses, birth dates, account numbers, medical record unit numbers, diagnoses, medications, procedures and physician notes. The hospital said some records may have contained Social Security numbers and Medicare/Medicaid numbers.

The hospital learned of the unsecured records on April 8, launched an internal investigation and began mailing letters to affected patients June 7.

"Moving forward, we are committed to taking steps to prevent this type of incident from occurring again in the future," according to the hospital. "We have or will be reviewing or modifying our policies and procedures to prevent future incidents, educating our medical staff about the incident and tasking them with reviewing and updating their own controls over patient records and reminding our workforce about the rules and procedures for protecting patient records."

More articles on data breaches:

Washington DC VA Medical Center reports breach due to missing report 
Iowa Planned Parenthood reports potential breach affecting 2,506 patients 
Half-year in review: 8 biggest data breaches from the past 6 months 

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