Portland (Ore.) Veterans Affairs Medical Center may have lost a bundle of patient identification cards that went missing after they were mailed back to the facility, according to a news report by The Columbian.
The hospital mailed the identification cards out to patients between Jan. 1 and Jan. 27, but an undisclosed number of cards were returned to the facility due to inaccurate mailing addresses. On Jan 31, hospital officials realized some of those returned identification cards had gone missing from the enrollment office, according to the news report.
The identification cards have veterans' names, photographs and special eligibility indicators printed on them. Although veterans' Social Security numbers and dates of birth are encoded into a bar code and magnetic strip, certain scanners can read the information. To protect against identity theft, the hospital is providing one year of credit protection for affected patients, according to the news report.
Read the news report about Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center's missing patient identification cards.
Read other coverage about hospital data breaches:
- Oklahoma's St. Francis Hospital Data Breach Affects 84K Patients
- Insurer Health Net Notifies 1.9M Individuals Affected by Lost Server Drives
- West Virginia's Charleston Area Medical Center Data Breach Affected 3K Patients
The hospital mailed the identification cards out to patients between Jan. 1 and Jan. 27, but an undisclosed number of cards were returned to the facility due to inaccurate mailing addresses. On Jan 31, hospital officials realized some of those returned identification cards had gone missing from the enrollment office, according to the news report.
The identification cards have veterans' names, photographs and special eligibility indicators printed on them. Although veterans' Social Security numbers and dates of birth are encoded into a bar code and magnetic strip, certain scanners can read the information. To protect against identity theft, the hospital is providing one year of credit protection for affected patients, according to the news report.
Read the news report about Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center's missing patient identification cards.
Read other coverage about hospital data breaches:
- Oklahoma's St. Francis Hospital Data Breach Affects 84K Patients
- Insurer Health Net Notifies 1.9M Individuals Affected by Lost Server Drives
- West Virginia's Charleston Area Medical Center Data Breach Affected 3K Patients