New Mexico Department of Health reacquires files left in donated cabinet

General Assignment Reporter

A local charity organization got more than it expected when it opened a used file cabinet donated by the state Department of Health.

The bottom drawer of the cabinet contained more than 90 private records of Health Department clients. Habitat for Humanity picked up the cabinet on July 1.

Health Department personnel later retrieved the cabinet and secured the data, and the department does not have any evidence the information was misused, according to a news release.

Amanda Frazier, chief privacy officer for the state Department of Health, said in a phone interview Tuesday a representative from Habitat for Humanity who discovered the data files called her department on July 15 to report the discovery.

“Habitat put them in a secure location in the store, behind a locked door, when they discovered them” until a Health Department staff member retrieved the files the same day, Frazier said.

She said the files were in the bottom drawer of a lateral filing cabinet. Frazier said the oversight was the fault of several employees, who apparently thought someone else had checked the cabinet to ensure it was empty.

“It wasn’t clear to the people moving it there was something in it,” she said.

Frazier said the employees in question received the “appropriate discipline” but were not fired.

“It wasn’t any one individual’s complete fault,” she said. “It was multiple people involved with this.”

All told, there were 93 files in the drawer regarding clients “in a particular program but not medical records,” she said.

The department notified all the clients tied to the records “whose information may have been compromised and are providing them with the resources and guidance on how to safeguard their personal information,” according to the news release.

Frazier said this is the first time something like this has happened since she came on board two years ago.

Earlier this year, the Health Department announced it had inadvertently released protected information on deceased New Mexicans in a response to a public records request by a journalist. The department said no names, addresses, birthdates or contact details had been compromised in that privacy breach.

Regarding the filing cabinet, Frazier said staff members were reminded “if things are leaving the building and you are responsible, you need to be physically looking into these cabinets to make sure the files are not going out.

“We are working hard to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Frazier said. “It’s always very frustrating and concerning when this happens.”

Kurt Krahn, executive director for Habitat for Humanity in Santa Fe, did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.

General Assignment Reporter

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