X-ray theft hits Huntsville Hospital
Published 10:53 am Thursday, March 15, 2012
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — In a scene that could have come out of a heist film, someone entered Huntsville Hospital last week, impersonated a vendor and left with two barrels of old X-rays.
A report filed with Huntsville police said that two 55-gallon barrels containing up to 1,000 patient information microfilms were stolen on March 7.
But the crime wasn’t about identity theft, officials say. Instead, hospital officials think the thieves plan to melt the X-rays to extract the silver in them.
The X-ray films did not contain sensitive medical records, hospital spokeswoman Cheryl Davis said Wednesday afternoon. The X-rays contained only the patient’s name, date of birth and medical record number, she said.
The X-rays belonged to between 125 to 175 patients, Davis said. Those patients had multiple X-ray shots to help account for 1,000 X-rays on the police report. Some of the X-rays in the barrels also could have been blank or black, she said.
Huntsville Hospital’s biggest concern about the episode may be the security breach that allowed someone posing as a vendor to come into the hospital and take away the barrels.
The barrels were waiting to be collected by a vendor that the hospital pays to dispose of them, said Davis, when the barrels were taken by someone posing as a vendor.
The hospital is reviewing its policies and procedures to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again, Davis said.
Hospital security workers and the police are investigating, she said. The hospital was able to give police the license plate number on the vehicle that the barrels were put in, Davis said.
“We’re still looking for the thieves,” she said.
The stolen X-rays could be worth up to $1,200 in extracted silver, Andrew Thornton, who is director of sales for a New Hampshire medical recycling firm, said Wednesday afternoon.
If nearly full, the two barrels stolen from Huntsville Hospital could contain about 500 pounds of X-rays, said Thornton, who is with B&D Associates of Concord, N.H. At $32 an ounce, the silver in the 500 pounds of X-rays could yield between $1,000 and $1,200 for the thieves, he said.
The theft of used X-rays from hospitals and other facilities for the purpose of extracting the silver is becoming more common, according to recent news reports.
A Toronto, Canada, man was charged with fraud in Ottawa after nearly 30,000 X-rays were stolen from hospitals and clinics across Ontario province, CTV Ottawa reported last week.
The man posed as an employee of a recycling firm that picks up used X-rays, the station reported. Police think the man began stealing X-rays in Toronto before expanding into other areas, the station reported.
The Lowell Sun of Lowell, Mass., reported last week that two Florida men were charged with stealing a 50-pound barrel of used X-rays from Lowell General Hospital.
The two men were also charged with stealing a barrel of used X-rays from Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport, Mass., the newspaper reported.
A YouTube video by DocuVault shows the process of extracting silver from used X-rays. First, the X-rays are shredded twice, then those shreds are washed and dried. The pieces are next pressed through a filter and then pressed into silver flakes and smelted.
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Information from: The Huntsville Times, http://www.al.com/huntsville
