NORTH CAROLINA COMPUTER STOLEN http://www2.wspa.com/news/2011/mar/08/5/update-computer-swiped-from-hospital-but-patient-i-ar-1552926/
Update: Computer Swiped From Hospital, But Patient Info OK
An employee at Spartanburg Regional Medical Centerreported that someone stole a computer from a nurse's station over the weekend, though the hospital says nothing indicates protected health information is at risk.
Hospital spokesman Chad Lawson said the IT department is still investigating, but as of 3:30 Tuesday afternoon, all indications are that no patient records were stored on the stolen computer.
According to a Spartanburg Public Safety incident report, the hospital employee, Michelle McKinney, said she received an e-mail Monday morning that said the computer had been stolen.
McKinney told police the computer, located at a nurses station in tower 3, was last seen Saturday.
McKinney said she spoke with all of the workers in her area to see if someone had been working on the computer, but none of them had been, the report said.
According to the report, there are no security cameras in the area from which the computer was stolen.
There were two programs loaded on the computer, but neither of them are used to access protected health information, Lawson said. However, Lawson said the IT department is still investigating to make absolute sure there was no leakage of information onto the computer's hard drive.
The computer, Lawson said, was new and had only been in use for about a week.
Lawson released the following statement late Tuesday afternoon:
"A desktop computer terminal, not an individual hard drive, was reported stolen from a work station on the third floor of our patient tower last Sunday. This particular computer had only been installed the week prior to its theft and was used to accesspassword-protected programs that store no patient information for any past or current patients being treated in the healthcare system. There were no witnesses, but we are searching for suspicious images that may have been captured by our network of security cameras. Spartanburg Regional has consistently been named one of country’s 100 “Most Wired” hospitals for its sophisticated utilization of technology for patient care, including the safeguarding of sensitive patient information. While it is impossible to prevent theft, we can assure our patients that their personal information is secure. We will continue to investigate this incident and conduct an internal review of information technology protocols and policies to ensure our privacy standards are upheld. We encourage the community to help us in our efforts to recover this computer hardware."
"A desktop computer terminal, not an individual hard drive, was reported stolen from a work station on the third floor of our patient tower last Sunday. This particular computer had only been installed the week prior to its theft and was used to accesspassword-protected programs that store no patient information for any past or current patients being treated in the healthcare system. There were no witnesses, but we are searching for suspicious images that may have been captured by our network of security cameras. Spartanburg Regional has consistently been named one of country’s 100 “Most Wired” hospitals for its sophisticated utilization of technology for patient care, including the safeguarding of sensitive patient information. While it is impossible to prevent theft, we can assure our patients that their personal information is secure. We will continue to investigate this incident and conduct an internal review of information technology protocols and policies to ensure our privacy standards are upheld. We encourage the community to help us in our efforts to recover this computer hardware."
An earlier version of this article, based on the police report, stated that just a hard drive was stolen, but Lawson said the entire computer tower was taken.
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