Data Breach Sunday: Almost 50,000 New York Area Patients Identity Theft Victims

April 13, 2008

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Remember how I wrote about the wide open access to many of our confidential records? Here is another perfect example.

Almost 50,000 patients of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital have had their identities stolen thanks to one man, Dwight McPherson.

McPherson worked as an admissions clerk at the hospital and between 2006 and 2008 has been stealing patients’ names, Social Security Numbers, and other information. (Notice the lack of the word “allegedly”. He’s already confessed).

Apparently he was quite selective on whose information he stole. From the AP story:

McPherson told agents that in 2006 he was approached by someone offering money in exchange for the names, addresses and other identifying information of male patients born between 1950 and 1970. The complaint said McPherson sold a batch of 1,000 records in December or January for $750, and another batch for $600 a short time later.

Police haven’t said who was buying the information and what it was going to be used for, but its a safe bet it was for nothing good.

What is interesting to me is how this was discovered in the first place. It wasn’t by the hospital (of course), but apparently postal inspectors in Atlanta came across some printouts of patient records, and that eventually led back to Mr. McPherson.

I suppose the only good thing in all of this is that it was only personal information that was stolen and not medical records. Otherwise there could be a horrible case of medical identity theft.

For the hospital’s part, it is doing the standard thing: reaching out to patients and offering them credit monitoring (I wonder which one). They say it is “examining its procedures to prevent future thefts”. I would hope so!

McPherson has of course been arrested and his next court date is in May. This one will be an interesting one to follow.

Source: WTOP

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Posted in Cases, Data Breach Sunday, Medical