[HIB]Info of 7,000 hospital patients may be on stolen laptop

[newsbot]

A laptop computer containing personal information on about 7,000 patients of the Cook County health system was stolen from a locked office, officials said today. The computer was stolen June 1 from a building at 1900 W. Polk St., but officials did not disclose the theft until today after an internal investigation, said Lucio Guererro, spokesman for the hospital system. The laptop was used to transmit data for medicaid and medicare reimbursements, Guerrero said. It contained information on 7,000 patients who had been seen by the health system over a three-day period in May, including the names, birth dates, some Social Security numbers and internal codes related to patients, Guerrero said. After notifying police, officials conducted an internal investigation and determined the computer was password-protected and that the information may have been deleted from the computer. However, officials cannot say for sure that the data was permanently deleted from the internal memory drive.

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