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Posted: Friday, October 21st, 2005 5:52 AM HST

Data on 130,000 patients at Kauai hospital lost

By Associated Press

LIHUE, Hawaii (AP) _ Officials at a Kauai hospital say a computer hard drive containing the Social Security numbers and other personal information of 130,000 former and current patients has been lost. Wilcox Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Lani Yukimura says the hard drive was reported missing on October Fifth. She says letters went out on Monday to the patients affected by the missing data. Yukimura says the data file was contained on a small, portable hard drive called a ``thumb drive.'' The information on the drive included names, addresses and medical record numbers as well as Social Security numbers. She says the information was not encrypted. Hospital officials have no indication that the information has been used by anyone. David Fox is the information security and privacy officer for Hawaii Pacific Health, which is the hospital's parent company. Fox says the hospital waited 12 days to notify patients because officials wanted to make sure the drive was indeed lost. (Copyright 2005 by the Associated Press. All rights reserved.)