The names and addresses of approximately 1,500 patients who got emergency medical services from the El Centro Fire Department were stolen, the city announced Thursday.
The city’s announcement comes a day after El Centro Regional Medical Center revealed that it was defrauded out of hundreds of thousands of X-ray files that were supposed to be digitized but in turn were stolen for their silver.
“It wasn’t a breach here, it was a breach at a contractor,” said City Manager Ruben Duran, adding the information in question was stolen from ADPI-Intermedix, a billing contractor responsible for collecting emergency medical services fees.
Duran noted that the information stolen from El Centro patients are from 2006 to 2012, but have “a lower likelihood that anyone is going to be able to use it, because we don’t provide date of birth or Social Security numbers — some cities do.”
Duran also said the company’s contract with the city ended this month and wasn’t renewed because of cost, not this incident.
But not only El Centro’s information was jeopardized.
The theft included ambulance data from the fire departments of Corona, Los Angeles and Berkeley, according to an ADPI press release.
This is not electronic theft, said Duran, this was hard paper stolen at the company.
The company learned about the security breach Oct. 1, according to the press release, which notes some of the information stolen was disclosed to a theft ring suspected of filing fraudulent federal tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service.
Since then authorities have identified the employee who admitted to the crime. That person has also been fired from the company.
Though a company investigation revealed that in certain instances the disclosure of personal information included Social Security numbers, names and dates of birth, no medical information was accessed or disclosed.
Furthermore, federal and state law enforcement agencies have already started the indictment and the arrest of the group that took the information, said Duran.
In the next few days affected patients will start receiving letters of notifications.
Affected patients can call ADPI for assistance at 877-264-9622 from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, or visit myidcare.com/intersecurity.
Staff Writer Alejandro Davila can be reached at 760-337-3445 or adavila@ivpressonline.com
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