DES MOINES, Iowa — Des Moines Orthopaedic Surgeons, known as DMOS, recently informed patients of a possible data breach involving their personal information. In the letters, DMOS said it notified the FBI of the potential breach and discovered the unauthorized removal of patient files in December.

The letter said “We recently experienced a security incident on or around February 17, 2023, when an unauthorized actor was able to access and remove certain DMOS files from certain systems within our network due to a DMOS vendor failure.” The discovery led to patients being notified in the January, 2024.

The breach included personal information including full names, addresses, birth dates, information off drivers licenses and state IDs as well as medical and health insurance information. In the letter, DMOS told recipients what they can do to protect their personal information — like placing fraud alerts and/or security freezes on their credit files. Affected individuals can also obtain a free credit report.

The President and CEO of DMOS said in the letter, “Please accept our apologies that this incident occurred,” and that since then incident was discovered, they have changed their technology vendors, upgraded security on all servers and workstations with outside monitoring, and implemented Multi Factor Authentication for network access.”

As of the letters’ release, DMOS said there is no evidence that any information has been used for fraud or identity theft.