The Dallas Star is reporting that a contractor for Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth breached the HIPAA confidentiality of 277,000 patients when it failed to properly destroy microfiche records dating from 1980 to 1990.
The microfiche films turned up in a community park. The report did not indicate just how the records came to be in the park or how they were discovered. The hospital has announced that it is notifying hundreds of thousands of patients involved in the breach.
The microfiche records reportedly included names, addresses, birth dates, health information and, in some cases, Social Security numbers from the Ft. Worth area.