PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Rhode Island’s largest health care provider says an employee’s laptop containing patient information was stolen, but there’s no indication that any patient’s information has been accessed or used as a result of the theft.
The Providence Journal reports (https://bit.ly/2q4kfy1) that Lifespan recently sent a notice about the potential data breach to about 20,000 patients.
The hospital network says the computer was stolen from a car on Feb. 25. The employee immediately reported the theft to police and Lifespan.
Lifespan says it began investigating and changed the employee’s credentials out of an abundance of caution.
The laptop may have had work emails containing information about patients and their medication prescriptions, but it didn’t have Social Security numbers, medical diagnoses and other sensitive information in the network’s database.
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