Health insurer Centene is missing six hard drives, containing personal data on 950,000 people, the St. Louis-based company disclosed late Monday.
Centene, which chiefly provides managed care plans for Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollees, said that the drives contain data points including member names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers, member ID numbers and unspecified health information. No financial or payment information has been compromised, according to Centene.
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The drives could not accounted for during a recent inventory of IT assets.
“While we don’t believe this information has been used inappropriately, out of abundance of caution and in transparency, we are disclosing an ongoing search for the hard drives. The drives were a part of a data project using laboratory results to improve the health outcomes of our members,” Centene Chairman, President and CEO Michael F. Neidorff said in a company statement.
As has become customary in data breaches across the healthcare industry, Centene will offer free credit and healthcare monitoring services to the 950,000 affected people. The individuals in question received laboratory services between 2009 and 2015, Centene said.
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