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 March 6, 2015.
- Organization as reported
- Valley COmmunity Healthcare, CA
- Entity type as reported
- Healthcare Provider
- Category as reported
Loss
- Location of information as reported
- Laptop
- Submission date
- March 6, 2015
- Observed by BreachRecords
- 2026-10-18 16:15 UTC (revision 14864, row:6003)
- Archived copy
- Held in the private archive (provenance)
On February 24, 2015, the covered entity (CE), Valley Community Healthcare, discovered that a laptop computer connected to the EKG/ECG machine was missing, and it was never recovered. The password protected, unencrypted laptop contained the demographic information of 1,233 individuals The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. As a result of OCR’s investigation, the CE evaluated the threats and vulnerabilities to its electronic protected health information. In addition, the CE implemented encryption pursuant to the Security Rule and increased the frequency of emails reminding employees to change their passwords. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions noted above.