Legacy Health, one of the largest hospital and clinical providers in the Portland area, said a former employee stole patients’ personal information.
The health system, which learned of the data breach in July, says patients who had tests run at its Legacy Health Laboratory network in the Portland metro and southwest Washington areas were affected. The employee – who has since been fired -- transferred their files to a personal storage device via external drives and email.
The stolen files contained patients’ names, dates of birth, medical record numbers, provider names, health insurance information, diagnosis and/or treatment information, as well as social security numbers for a subset of the files.
Legacy spokeswoman Vicki Guinn would not share the number of patients affected saying only that the leaked data came from “a small percentage” of laboratory patients. She also did not provide the total number of patients who use the lab services.
Earlier this week, Legacy began mailing letters to the patients whose information was stolen. The hospital system is offering free credit monitoring and identity protection services to patients whose social security numbers were stolen. Patients can call 1-855-681-3527 for more information.