Foundations Recovery Network notifying patients after a laptop with PHI was stolen from an employee’s car

[Erica Absetz <erica () riskbasedsecurity com>]

http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=12980

Foundations Recovery Network sent out this letter to patients last week:

I am writing on behalf of Foundations Recovery Network to inform you
of a recent privacy incident concerning your personal information. On
Saturday, June 15 th, one of our employees informed us that she had
been the victim of a burglary during the early morning hours on June
15 th at approximately 2:45 a.m. and that her company laptop had been
stolen. The laptop contained certain aspects of patient information
which she needed as part of her role with our company. The employee
reported the theft immediately to law enforcement authorities. We
understand that the theft was one of several that took place in her
neighborhood that night, so we do not believe the thief specifically
targeted her or the laptop.

At this time, we do not know whether the information on the laptop has
been accessed. It is important to note that the information is
password protected. However, because the safety and security of your
information is our utmost priority, we wanted to contact you out of an
abundance of caution and make you aware of the situation. The
potentially disclosed information may include your personal
information (such as name, date of birth, address, telephone number
and social security number) and medical information (such as diagnosis
— the majority of which were listed in numeric medical code only,
level of care, date of service, and health insurance information). We
sincerely regret that this incident occurred.

Even though we have no reason to believe that your information has
been accessed by anyone outside our organization at this time, and we
do not believe any of your financial information is included on the
stolen laptop, we want to make sure you are aware of the incident and
have resources available to protect your personal information.
Therefore, we have contracted with Experian to provide to you a free
one year membership in Experian’ se ProtectMyIDe Alert. This product
helps detect possible misuse of your personal information and provides
you with identity protection services focused on immediate
identification and resolution of identity theft. You may sign up for
this service by following the instructions on the last page of this
letter in Attachment B. You will be able to access this offer at no
cost to you until October 31, 2013. See the attachments to this letter
for more information regarding enrollment in Experian’ se ProtectMyIDe
Alert and other measures you may want to take.

Again, maintaining the integrity of confidential information is
extremely important to us. We sincerely apologize for any
inconvenience this incident has caused for you. Please be assured that
we will keep you informed of any developments in the investigation
that may be of importance to you. If you have any questions, please do
not hesitate to contact us at 888-312-3310.

Of course, they are not notifying patients “in an abundance of
caution” of their own volition. They have to notify them under the new
HITECH regulations. And where is their statement about whether the
employee violated protocol by not having the files encrypted and by
leaving the laptop in an unattended vehicle overnight? Was Foundations
Recovery Network okay with this? If not, what are they doing to ensure
this doesn’t happen again?

Foundations Recovery Network is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.
They have three inpatient treatment centers and a number of outpatient
treatment centers across the country. From their letter, it is not
clear whether the stolen data were from one center’s patients or
multiple centers’ patients. There is no notice or statement on their
web site about the breach, but a copy of the breach notification
letterappeared on California’s breach reporting site today.
_______________________________________________
Dataloss-discuss Mailing List (dataloss-discuss () datalossdb org)
Archived at http://seclists.org/dataloss/
Unsubscribe at http://lists.osvdb.org/mailman/listinfo/dataloss-discuss

Supporters:

Risk Based Security (http://www.riskbasedsecurity.com/)
Risk Based Security equips organizations with security intelligence, risk
management services and on-demand security solutions to establish
customized risk-based programs to address information security and
compliance challenges. 

Tenable Network Security (http://www.tenable.com/)
Tenable Network Security provides a suite of solutions which unify real-time
vulnerability, event and compliance monitoring into a single, role-based, interface
for administrators, auditors and risk managers to evaluate, communicate and
report needed information for effective decision making and systems management.