Representatives of Medicaid (the U.S. agency providing health care to people with low incomes) acknowledged that they have lost somewhere in the CD containing the complete data of approximately 68 thousand. patients. Victims are residents of Orange County, California, using a program offered by the Medicaid health care CalOptima.
It is known that the data on the disc were not secured in any way (eg, encryption) - among them were such customers' personal details, date of birth, medical procedure codes and diagnostic IDs and social security numbers. One of the contractors, Medicaid (responsible for processing the data) sent this CD to the agency by post - after it received it appeared that the envelope containing all the necessary documents, but ... missing records.

Representatives of CalOptima say that if we do not know what actually happened - but there is still no evidence that the theft occurred. What is certain is only that the record was lost somewhere. The Agency has issued a general statement to customers - to ensure it that tries to explain the cause of this incident and has offered full assistance in the event of any problems arising from uncontrolled publication of any information from the disc. Medicaid spokesman also announced that the agency intends to find out why you have one of its contractors are not encrypted disc content before sending it.

It is worth noting that the U.S. was entered into force a new law governing such principle of information about cases of data loss by companies and institutions operating in the medical industry. It provides, inter alia, that any such incident shall immediately be informed consumers and relevant authorities for inspection.

New regulations called. Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) - it is estimated that the overall cost of implementation of these provisions will reach U.S. $ 20 billion. They require from companies such as an internal obligation to encrypt all data, and implement automated deletion of data from removable media when it detects an unauthorized attempt to read.

It should be noted, however, that even if the new rules have not yet entered into force, it represented CalOptima and so had to immediately disclose any information about the incident - as among the lost data were social security numbers (and the obligation to notify such cases have already been implemented long ago).