LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine Data Breach (2015)

A laptop stolen from a member of the faculty of LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine has potentially exposed the protected health information of approximately 5,000 minor patients primarily living in Louisiana and Mississippi. Dr. Christopher Roth, Assistant Professor of Urology, reported that his university-issued laptop was stolen from his car sometime between the evening hours of July 16 and the early morning hours of July 17, 2015. The car was parked in front of his home. Dr. Roth said he discovered the theft on the morning of the 17th as he was leaving to attend clinic. He reported the theft to law enforcement and the university. The laptop has not been recovered. The information on the laptop included names, dates of birth, dates of treatment, descriptions of patients' conditions, treatments, and outcomes, lab test results, radiological and ultrasound images, medical record numbers, and diagnosis and treatment information. No Social Security numbers, credit card, bank account information or other financial data were stored on the laptop. When the theft was reported, the Office of Compliance at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans began the difficult and laborious process of trying to reconstruct the files that could have been stored on the laptop to identify any patients whose information may have been compromised. When using the laptop, the data were not saved to LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans servers, but, instead, to the laptop's hard drive, so the specific data stored on the laptop cannot be accessed by the university. The process to reconstruct and ready notifications took nearly eight weeks to complete. It is unknown whether any specific patient's data were on the stolen laptop, however those patients the university suspects may have been affected will receive individual notification by mail, along with information about protecting against identity theft.