Florida: Second County HIV List Missing

According to a state investigative report released Friday, about 15 pages of a confidential list of people with HIV/AIDS went missing from a desk at the Palm Beach County Health Department on Feb. 2. The missing pages have not been found, said department spokesperson Tim O'Connor.

Deborah McCray, a statistical analyst who was updating a partial list of HIV/AIDS patients, told investigators that Shireesh Patel, a co-worker, put a stack of personal papers on her desk near the 15 pages. McCray said she locked up the report and her office after Patel left. The next day, the pages could not be found. Investigators were unable to determine if McCray misfiled the pages or if Patel accidentally picked them up.

The report said Patel misled investigators about the incident, urged McCray to lie about it, and asked others about recreating the list. According to the report, Patel intimidated McCray into typing his son's 12-page college paper, despite being told by a supervisor not to. McCray was typing the college paper when the pages went missing. Patel was dismissed Wednesday, O'Connor said.

This latest breach of privacy in the department is unrelated to a Feb. 17 incident in which the entire list of 6,500 county HIV/AIDS patient names was accidentally e-mailed to 800 department employees. Supervisor John "Jack" Nolan was demoted after that incident. There is also no relation between the missing 15 pages and an anonymous letter sent last month to about 12 HIV patients; the recipients of the letters were not people whose names were on the missing pages, O'Connor said. Asked whether patient names from either the pages or the list had been leaked to the public, O'Connor replied, "Not that we know of."

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