Nearly 2,900 patients from The Queen's Medical Center and Queen's North Hawaii Community Hopspital may have had their personal health information exposed, the health system announced Friday.
On Feb. 3, an email containing the patient name, patient account number, health plan ID, admission date, discharge date and other limited information related to the patients’ care, was sent by a Queen's employee to the wrong email address.
Social Security numbers and financial account information were not included in the email, but in 300 cases, patient diagnoses were disclosed.
“We take the privacy and confidentiality of our patients’ information very seriously and deeply regret the concern and inconvenience this situation may cause,” said Harold Moscho, vice president of Information Technology and chief information officer, in a statement. “There is no indication that the information has been or will be misused. Maintaining our patients’ trust is our utmost priority and thus, we believe proactively making them aware of this situation is essential. Upon learning of the incident, we moved as quickly as possible to confirm the facts and then to set up the call center and distribute the letters to the affected individuals.”
Queen's officials said the error was discovered the following day and steps were immediately taken to contact the recipient and recall the message. However, to date, efforts to contact the individual or recall the email have been unsuccessful.
“While Queen’s has long had safeguards in place to protect patient information, we have taken additional steps to prevent this from occurring in the future. Queen’s is committed to being best in class when it comes to information security and our commitment to providing superior healthcare includes ensuring the security and confidentiality of our patients’ information,” Moscho said.
Queen’s recommends that affected patients carefully review the statements they receive from their insurers and health care providers. If any services that were not provided to them are listed, they should contact the insurer or provider immediately.
For questions, patients can call 1-844-904-0956, Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.