Lucile Packard suffers second data breach in six months
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, a 311-bed facility in Palo Alto, Calif., has suffered its third data breach in four years--and its second in six months--this one potentially effecting 12,900 patients.
According to an announcement on the hospital's website, a password-protected, non-functional laptop computer that potentially could have contained limited medical information on pediatric patients was stolen from a "secured, badge-access controlled area of the hospital" between May 2 and May 8. Information on the laptop was related to operating room schedules over a three-year period beginning in 2009, so no financial information or Social Security numbers were compromised, according to the hospital. Vulnerable information, however, included patient names, ages, medical record numbers, telephone numbers, scheduled surgical procedures and names of physicians involved in procedures.