Hard drives with personal info stolen from doctors group

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Two Indiana State Medical Association computer hard drives that have been stolen contain insurance information on 39,000 people, the doctors group said Monday.

One of its employees was transporting two archive backup hard drives to an offsite storage location when the thefts occurred on Feb. 13, ISMA said. It described the theft as "a random criminal act" that is being investigated by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

The hard drives stored ISMA's group health and life insurance databases and included identifying information such as Social Security numbers, names, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses and personal medical histories, the association said.

ISMA sent notification letters to everyone affected, who are current and former members of the ISMA insurance plans. Each individual notification letter explains the specific types of information involved, since not all records included Social Security numbers or medical history information, it said.

ISMA is offering one year of credit monitoring and repair services to all persons affected at no cost, it said.

The ISMA insurance plans are through Anthem, the target of a recent electronic database hack that likely already exposed some of the personal information of its insurance plan members, the association said.

ISMA has hired outside experts who are reviewing its internal processes to prevent future incidents, it said.