HHS OCR breach portal (HIPAA breaches affecting 500 or more individuals) Primary notice
Posted on the HHS Office for Civil Rights breach portal with a submission date of July 30, 2015.
- Organization as reported
- Sioux Falls VA Health Care System, SD
- Entity type as reported
- Healthcare Provider
- Category as reported
Loss
- Location of information as reported
- Paper/Films
- Submission date
- July 30, 2015
- Observed by BreachRecords
- 2026-10-18 16:15 UTC (revision 14742, row:5881)
- Archived copy
- Held in the private archive (provenance)
In early April 2015, while performing a non-routine pharmacy audit, the covered entity (CE), Sioux Falls Veterans Administration Health Care System, discovered that paper prescription records were missing from its secured vault; it was unable to determine what happened to the records, so it reported a breach. The missing records affected 1,111 individuals, and contained clinical and/or demographic protected health information (PHI). The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. Following the breach, the CE discontinued attaching progress notes with full social security numbers. The CE also implemented an inventory for pharmacy records, removed obsolete language from its procedures regarding the Breach Notification Rule, and trained all relevant staff on safeguarding paper records containing PHI and timely discovery and notifications. OCR obtained assurances the CE implemented the corrective actions noted above.