Veterans Records MAY have been exposed in Augusta GA

[Henry Brown <hbrown () knology net>]

from the Augusta Chronicle http://goo.gl/H62ks

The personal information of thousands of area veterans might have been 
exposed after an employee at the Aiken outpatient clinic of Charlie 
Norwood VA Medical Center dumped appointment lists into the wrong trash 
can in February, the agency said in a news release Friday.

The VA is offering free credit monitoring for a year to 2,667 veterans 
who used that clinic between January 2010 and Jan. 31. The facility does 
not think that the information has been misused or fallen into the wrong 
hands, said Dr. Michael Spencer, the deputy chief of staff for the facility.

"This is really just making sure that we did exactly the right thing in 
the right way," he said.

An employee threw appointment lists for January into a regular trash can 
instead of a bin for items to be shredded, the facility said in a news 
release.

The lists contained Social Security numbers and dates of birth. The 
mix-up was discovered a day or two later when another employee went out 
to a trash bin "and found a single document that had patient 
information," Spencer said.

"In investigating how that got there, this all became apparent," he said.

The VA could not verify how many veterans were affected, so it is 
notifying everyone who used the clinic in the previous year, he said.
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