Pitt County Memorial hospital is paying credit monitoring after an employee lost a thumbdrive containing names and social security numbers.

From The Greenville Daily Reflector:

PCMH sent letters to the affected patients, offering one year of free credit monitoring and identity theft services through Debix Inc. It will include credit monitoring and insurance protection to any patient who becomes a victim of identity theft as a result of the incident.

The article does not mention what the total cost of the breach will be, but you can get an estimate here.  There is also no mention of whether the device contained any protected health information (PHI) that would be covered by HIPAA.  New disclosure laws recently took affect as part of the HITECH Act of 2009.  If encryption is implemented on the storage device, notification is not required.

Data Security, Healthcare