Home Health & Hospice Week

You'd better make sure your HIPAA breach policies and procedures are up to snuff, because you might find yourself in a situation like Rainbow Hospice and Palliative Care in Park Ridge, Ill.

Rainbow Hospice had to alert patients after a staffer's laptop was stolen during a home visit, reports the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate. The computer had "security measures in place," but held patient information such as names, addresses, social security numbers, insurance information, medications, treatments, and diagnoses, Rainbow says in a release. The hospice notified individuals with information stored on the computer.

Rainbow Hospice has offered those individuals 12 months of free identity theft protection services, the newspaper reports. Rainbow Hospice and the identity theft protection service Debix have set up a hotline to answer questions about the potential privacy breach.

"As soon as this happened, we investigated the situation and conducted an extensive review of our processes in order to protect your data and ensure that an event like this will not happen again," the hospice says in the release. "We deeply regret this incident and apologize for any inconvenience or concern it may cause you."