Fairview can't find box of 1,200 patient records

In February, staffers at Fairview Health Services in Minneapolis packed up about 1,200 patient records for shipping to a new office across town.

Unfortunately, no one at Fairview has seen the box since.

This week, officials began notifying patients that their health and billing records -- including names, birthdates and medical diagnoses -- may have been lost.

Officials say there's no evidence of any misuse of the records, which involved patients admitted to Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina between April 2010 and February 2011.

Still, mindful that medical privacy and identity theft have become prickly topics, Fairview is offering the affected patients a free year's subscription to an identity protection service.

"We firmly believe that there is no financial risk to these patients," said Lois Dahl, Fairview's information privacy director, noting that the records did not include Social Security numbers or credit card information.

On Wednesday, Fairview issued a written statement saying it "takes this incident very seriously."

"Obviously, our hope was that we could find it," she said Wednesday. "We, at this point, have kind of lost our hope that we will find it before we need to notify our patients." The notification letters were mailed to patients Tuesday.

Comprehensive search

The records -- printouts of reports used to process insurance claims -- had been boxed up at Fairview's Financial Securing Center, which was scheduled to be moved on Saturday, Feb. 19, to a new office a few miles away.

Then the box disappeared. A staff member reported it missing the next Monday, Dahl said.

Fairview said it conducted "comprehensive searches" of both shipping and receiving areas and interviewed employees and vendors, without luck.

In this case, though, the company discovered that it can be just as embarrassing to lose something the old-fashioned way.

"You think it's going to be electronic, and then it's a box of paper," Dahl said.

Depending on how many patients sign up, the identity-theft service could cost Fairview about $37,000, or $31 a person, Dahl said.

If the box ever turns up, Fairview says, it will notify patients "as soon as possible."