Lane County Health & Human Services (H&HS) announced that 49 boxes containing 566 Community Health Centers of Lane County patient medical information files and 149 Lane County Developmental Disabilities client files were lost. Contained within the lost records were medical histories, addresses, contact information and social security numbers.
On June 19, during a routine search, staff was unable to locate the records in question. The records had previously been relocated by a moving company to a storage facility for temporary storage during the renovation of the Charnelton Clinic. Subsequent searches by multiple teams failed to locate the records.
Analysis indicates the records may have been inadvertently destroyed as part of routine document management practice for non-medical records. Because this cannot be verified at this time, the CHC is obligated to provide notification to patients and the public. On Tuesday, July 24, H&HS sent written notification to all patients and clients whose records could not be located and for whom it had up-to-date contact information.
H&HS immediately began to review its policies and practices regarding records storage and is taking steps to protect against future incidents, including obtaining specialized, secure medical records storage services.
To date, investigators have yet to determine how the records were misplaced; however, there is no indication they were stolen or that any of the information has been compromised. H&HS encourages patients and clients to regularly review financial statements and credit reports to check to for unexpected items, accounts or services.
H&HS will also reimburse patients for up to 6-months of membership to an accredited credit monitoring services. Patients can check credit reports online at www.annualcreditreport.com
