Nearly 6 0,000 San Francisco Department of Public Health patients had their data compromised after a break in at a billing service contractor, the health department announced Friday.

A Feb. 5 break-in at Sutherland Healthcare Solutions, a Torrance-based company that does billing for the health department, resulted in the theft of computers, which contained personal information on about 55,900 San Francisco patients.

The information on the computers included names, dates of birth, billing information and in some cases Social Security numbers. Most of the patients had been treated at city-run health clinics or San Francisco General Hospital's trauma center.

“We take the security and privacy of patient information very seriously,” said Barbara Garcia, San Francisco's director of public health. “We are working to ensure that all patients are notified and provided with resources to help them protect their privacy.”

No reports of the data being used have come forward, and DPH plans to start informing impacted patients next week.

For its part, Sutherland Healthcare Solutions is offering patients free credit monitoring and recovery services for a year along with identity theft insurance.

The news comes just after another security breach that affected more than 9,000 patients at the UC San Francisco Medical Center. That information was also on computers that were stolen.

Bay Area NewsSan Francisco Department of Public HealthSutherland Healthcare SolutionsUC San Francisco Medical Center

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