WESTMED Medical Group

An unencrypted laptop computer that contained the electronic protected health information (ePHI) of 578 individuals was stolen from the covered entity (CE), WestMed Medical Group. The ePHI included names, dates of birth and test results. Upon discovery of the breach, the CE filed a police report and provided breach notification to affected individuals, HHS and the media. As a result of OCR's investigation, the CE improved physical security by locking all laptops during the day and storing all laptops in a locked cabinet overnight. In addition, the CE reconfigured all laptops with strong passwords and implemented a new procedure to save data to a secure file server. Further, the CE encrypted all laptop hard drives. The CE also retrained staff on safeguarding ePHI. \ \