SALT LAKE CITY – Billing records for approximately 2.2 million patients and guarantors were reported stolen this week from the University of Utah Hospitals & Clinics.

Officials said they are now assessing the network's information systems and safeguarding patient records.

Backup tapes of patient billing records, which were contained in a metal box, were stolen from a car belonging to an independent storage company, Perpetual Storage, Inc., which is contracted by the healthcare system. The system sends the backup tapes off-site for storage for disaster recovery purposes.

The billing records included patient names, related demographic information and diagnostic codes for those treated at University of Utah Hospitals & Clinics' facilities or by one of its providers during the past 16 years.

Hospital officials said none of the records contained credit card information. However, records for a subset of 1.3 million patients contained Social Security numbers.

Hospital officials said other types of information possibly included on the tapes are date of birth, physician name, insurance, driver's license number and, in rare instances, clinical notes corroborating diagnoses for billing purposes.