Thousands of patient records breached at UC Irvine

Medical records of 4,859 patients at UC Irvine Medical Center were breached over a nearly four-year period, the hospital announced Thursday. An employee whose job required access to some patient records viewed thousands of additional records "without a job-related purpose" from June 2011 to March 2015, the hospital said in a statement. It was unclear what the employee did with the sensitive information, which included patient names, birthdays, heights and weights, medical record numbers, home addresses, diagnoses, test orders and results, medications and employment status. Outside experts analyzed the employee's hard drive and e-mail account and found no evidence that the records had been downloaded or distributed via e-mail, said hospital spokesman John Murray.