Add a recycling center to the list of places--which also includes an auto shop and a public dump--where hospital patient records have turned up this year. A janitor, allegedly looking to make a quick buck, was arrested and charged with felony commercial burglary last week after admitting to selling 14 boxes filled with printouts of records for roughly 30,000 patients to a recycling center for $40.
Names of patients, as well as their addresses, phone numbers and medical record numbers all were on the printouts, according to L.A. County chief executive William T. Fujioka, reported the Los Angeles Times. However, Fujioka said, no medical information was listed.
Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore stated that the janitor--Robert Sanders--had no motives other than to earn money for recycling paper. "There's no identity theft," Whitmore told the Times.
Still, the hospital is taking no chances. It is sending a letter to anyone who may have been affected, with instructions for how to handle the situation, should that be the case.
"What's clear is that those papers, even if they were scrap, should not have been removed from the premises," said Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who oversees the hospital's district. "There will be appropriate consequences once it's determined what actually happened."
To learn more:
- read this Los Angeles Times article
- here's the media notification of the breach
- here's the letter sent out to possibly affected patients
- check out this Los Angeles Times blog post