Australian Health Services Privacy Breach, 10 November 2021

South Australia Ambulance Service patients’ personal information stolen from consultancy firm

The personal details of 28,000 patients have been lost on a stolen a storage device

Department Statement: Data incident
Department Statement: SAAS Consumer information: data loss
Source: SA Ambulance Service patients’ personal information stolen from consultancy firm | ABC News (Australia)

View other incidents relating to Medical and Health Care and South Australia.

The SA Ambulance Service says the personal details of 28,000 patients have been stolen but there is no indication they have been misused.

The data relates to sample of Ambulance attendances in the years 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003.

The information was on a storage device that was stolen from a consultancy firm in July. It had held it since the early 2000s

The data contains a combination of the following:

• Personal information (i.e. consumer name, date of birth, gender, address)
• Ambulance attendance details (i.e. address of ambulance call out, transport destination)
• Patient condition and some treatment codes
• Billing codes and details (no payment details were included in this data)
• Ambulance Cover membership details
• Pension Concession number (if relevant)
• Department of Veterans’ Affairs number (if relevant)

“Unfortunately the data remains unrecovered,” the ambulance service said on its website.

“There has been no evidence that any of the data has been used inappropriately since the theft.”

The data loss was reported to the South Australian Police, Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Privacy Committee of South Australia.