A storage servicer has notified the loss of 15 storing packets to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC). The packets were stowed at 3 Iron Mountain services in Fort Worth, Dallas, as well as Irving.
The packets had records pertaining to people who had submitted applications to HHSC for medical help during January 1, 2008, to August 31, 2009. The records had names, dates of birth, addresses, Social Security claim numbers, Social Security numbers, Medicaid/individual numbers, bank account numbers, and medical documentation numbers. The break report presented to the Division of Health and Human Services’ OCR shows 600 people were impacted.
Iron Mountain was hired by HHSC to stock packages of client records before the files being permanently demolished. Now HHSC is carrying out an inquiry into Iron Mountain’s managing of the records and to find out how the packets were misplaced. As soon as the inquiry has finished, HHSC will review its procedures and policies to decrease the possibility of similar cases happening in the time to come.
When packets of old records are stolen or lost it can be problematic to find the people impacted. When files do exist, contact info might be outdated making it problematic to warn patients. In this instance, HHSC has displayed a break notification on its website to notify people of the loss of their records. People who consider that their case info has been misplaced have been offered one year of credit checking services free of charge.
This isn’t the first time that Iron Mountain has been involved in a break of saved health info. In 2013, workers of Iron Mountain were doubted of thieving x-ray films to regain the silver. 742 packets of x-rays were found to be lost and 2 workers were involved. Altogether 49,714 sick persons of Orthopaedic Specialty Institute Medical Group were impacted.
During the identical year, an analogous break was informed which affected 10,000 sick persons of the Hand Care Center and Long Beach Internal Health Group as well as the Shoulder and Elbow Institution also informed a break involving the thievery of covers of x-rays from Iron Mountain’s Data Organization facilities. These thieveries were referred to rogue workers at the company.
