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I was a victim of medical records theft - West Coast gal Posted: Dec 24th, 2015 - 9:17 am In Reply to: 100 million medical records hacked in 2015. - sm
About seven years ago, I was the victim of medical records theft at a major medical center on the West Coast. It all happened because an employee of the large university teaching hospital where it happened was taking some records IN HIS CAR, unsecured, from one storage location to another, stopped along the way for coffee or something, and the records were stolen in transit. I received a letter stating my records had been stolen. The state (which owns the medical center) provided each of us with one year of free credit monitoring. Big fat deal. While theft of boxes from a car does not exactly qualify as hacking, I think that the anxiety and grief produced by going through this experience is the same. The kicker to all of this is that I am HIV positive as a result of a needle stick when I worked in a clinical job years ago. (I became an MT so I could work at home.) Of course my family and close friends know my HIV status, but it is not exactly something I would want the whole wide world to know and to this day I live in fear about where my records are and when this little piece of information might come out to bite me. One of the people whose records was stolen was a lawyer and even she could not seem to bring the state to its knees. The lesson I learned from this is that your medical information is never truly safe. I went to the doctor not long ago and while I was sitting in the exam room waiting, I noticed that a chart from another patient had been left right there. If I had wanted to, I could have read it. Of course, I did not, but some people might have. All I am saying is this: Please do not assume your most personal medical information is safe. It is not.
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