Health Insurer Centene Reports Finding Six Lost Hard Drives
Centene Corp., the St. Louis, Mo.-based health insurer, has recovered the six missing computer hard drives that contained personal health information (PHI) of approximately 950,000 individuals.
Centene officials reported the following in a regulatory filing Wednesday, “In the process of completing its investigation, on February 10, 2016, the company received an admission from an employee to placing the six hard drives in a locked receptacle for secure destruction. As a result, the Company satisfied itself and concluded its investigation.”
Healthcare Informatics accessed the regulatory filing from a link in an article by the St. Louis Business Journal posted Wednesday regarding Centene’s recovery of the hard drives.
As previously reported by HCI’s Managing Editor Rajiv Leventhal, in a Jan. 25 press release, Centene announced an internal search of information technology assets for the six hard drives and said it had determined the hard drives contained the personal health information of certain individuals who received laboratory services from 2009-2015, including name, address, date of birth, social security number, member ID number and health information. The hard drives do not include any financial or payment information, Centene said.
