Burglary, possible data breach could have exposed 3K Peak Vista patients’ health information

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - Peak Vista Community Health Centers said two computers stolen during a burglary had patients’ personal and health information on them.

On March 7, Peak Vista said it alerted Colorado Springs police that its health center on Jet Wing Drive in southeast Colorado Springs had been broken into. According to Peak Vista’s Chief Operations Officer Robert Nartker, computers, printers and scanners were stolen. Nartker said Peak Vista had a third-party team of information technology experts and forensic scientists investigate to see whether any patient information was compromised.

“Following that on March 31, the results from those forensic scientists was given to us, and that investigation determined that two of the stolen computers did contain patient information, and there could be the possibility of a breach,” Nartker said.

Peak Vista said the data impacted included patient names, birth dates, phone numbers, medical record numbers, diagnosis and medication lists. Social Security numbers, financial account numbers and driver’s license numbers were not involved in the potential breach. According to Peak Vista, the information that was potentially compromised was not from its COVID-19 vaccine clinic database. So anyone who only used Peak Vista to get a COVID-19 shot should not be impacted.

Nartker said Peak Vista set up a hotline so the roughly 3,000 patients who were effected could call with any questions or concerns. The hotline number is 1-855-930-6231. It’s open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and will stay open for at least 90 days.

Letters were mailed to impacted patients on April 23, more than three weeks after the health center had discovered the data breach.

“Once we arrived that there was a potential breach, we needed to put a hotline together, we needed to figure out how we can staff that hotline, we needed to make sure we had the correct patient information and make sure that we had a way to communicate with those patients when they reached out to us,” Nartker said. “So we needed a little bit of time to put that together.”

Colorado Springs police said the investigation was still ongoing. No suspects have been identified, but several of the devices have been recovered. CSPD did not specify which stolen items had been found. Anyone who has information about this crime can call CSPD at 719-444-7000.

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