A UF physician resigned Monday after university privacy officials discovered he gave away a computer containing the confidential information of about 1,900 patients.
Dr. Francis D. Ong, an assistant professor of plastic surgery at the UF College of Medicine in Jacksonville, kept records such as patients' digital photographs, names, dates of birth, Social Security or Medicare numbers and patient medical information on the possibly breached computer.
UF privacy officials sent mailings containing a brochure about protecting financial information to nearly 1,900 patients Ong treated from July 2005, when he started his position, to December 2007.
David Behinfar, HIPAA compliance manager at the College of Medicine, said the security breach was discovered when Ong informed administrators he was having issues with providing patient photographs to insurance companies because he did not have the computer anymore.
Ong told officials on April 23 he gave the computer to a Jacksonville family he knew around late January or early February for personal use, Behinfar said.
The computer was returned to UF privacy officials on April 25.
Behinfar said Ong insists none of the patient information was viewed while it was with the Jacksonville family.
A family member wiped the computer's operating system Feb. 24, and most of the information relating to Ong's patients was erased, Behinfar said.
Behinfar said a UF computer forensics lab was able to find some remnants of pictures in some areas of the hard drive, but everything else was lost in the installation of the new operating system.
It is against UF policy to store confidential patient information on anything other than protected university servers - not a computer hard drive.
Behinfar said punishment for violating privacy codes include termination and suspension, varying on the incident.
Behinfar said Ong's patients are being encouraged to put fraud alerts on their financial accounts.
He said most of Ong's patients are concerned for identity-theft purposes, but the news has been fairly well received so far.
"They understand the actions that were taken," he said. "A lot of people are just looking for advice."
