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North Shore-LIJ Patients to be Notified About Potential Data Breach
[June 12, 2015]

North Shore-LIJ Patients to be Notified About Potential Data Breach


Five laptop computers were stolen last September from the offices of Global Care Delivery (GCD), Inc., a Texas-based firm that contracted with the North Shore-LIJ Health System and other healthcare providers to process and collect payments owed by health insurers to hospitals.

Four of the five stolen laptops may have contained information on approximately 18,000 North Shore-LIJ patients, including their first and last names, dates of birth, internal account numbers, diagnosis and procedure codes, and insurance identification numbers. The laptops contained information with Social Security numbers on about 2,000 of those patients. No credit card numbers or other financial information was included in the data. Although laptops were pssword protected, they were not encrypted. On September 2, 2014 GCD staff members discovered five laptops were missing from the GCD office. GCD notified law enforcement of the theft by an unknown person or persons at the time it was discovered.



GCD notified North Shore-LIJ on May 11, 2015. The laptops have not been recovered. GCD and the North Shore-LIJ Health System take the privacy of individuals seriously. Patients whose information may have been compromised will receive additional information by mail about how to protect themselves. Although neither GCD nor North Shore-LIJ are aware of any access or misuse of the data, they strongly encourage individuals to remain alert to potential harm by obtaining a credit report from one of the major credit reporting agencies and monitoring any accounts for unauthorized activity. Identity theft protection services will be made available to individuals who were impacted.

Patients seeking more information about this incident should contact the health system's call center at 1-855-367-0138.



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