Millions of patient billing records stolen from UT hospital

Billing records for about 2.2 million patients and guarantors were stolen last week from the University of Utah Hospitals & Clinics, just one more in what appears to be a rapidly growing flood of identity theft incidents. The data went missing when backup tapes of patient billing records were stolen from a car belonging to the University's storage contractor. The tapes, which were en route to an off-site location for disaster recovery purposes, included patient names, related demographic information and diagnostic codes for those treated at the Hospital & Clinics or by one of its providers during a 16-year period. The data also may include date of birth, physician name, insurance, driver's license number and occasionally, clinical notes corroborating diagnoses.

Hospital offices have since consulted with an information security company, which concluded that the data would only be accessible using professional equipment. Meanwhile, police, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service have concluded that this was a random break-in. (Given the money to be made by misusing this data, I'm not sure I agree with them!)

To learn more about the break-in:
- read this Healthcare IT News piece [1]

Related Articles:
UnitedHealthcare breach leads to UC Irvine identity thefts [2]
Trend: Identity thieves get better at stealing medical records [3]
The growing problem of medical identity theft [4]
NY hospital worker charges with massive file theft [5]