LITTLE ROCK—Some clients of the state Department of Human Services weren’t notified for more than a month and a half after files containing their Social Security numbers and medical information were stolen from the back seat of a doctor’s car.

The files contained information on 16 families, the agency told Little Rock television station KLRT on Thursday. The information was stolen on May 5, but letters notifying the affected families of the theft didn’t get sent until June 26, the station reported.

DHS spokeswoman Julie Munsell said agency officials waited to notify the affected clients in the hope that they would be able to get the files back.

“Part of the process is looking at the recovery,” she said. “In issues such as a stolen vehicle, you hope that’s immediately recovered and you work with law enforcement so that hopefully you’ll be sending out recovery notices, not notices of missing information.”

The files were in a briefcase that had been left on the back seat of a car owned by a doctor employed by DHS, the agency said. The car was left unlocked, and the briefcase was stolen, DHS said.

Munsell said agency regulations allow transport of such files out of the office, but those taking them are expected to keep them secure.

“Protocol does allow them to take files off site. It also requires they safeguard those,” she said. “That’s really the issue—the safeguard of that information. We do expect when they leave their vehicles that they take information with them.”

Amanda Burrell was one of those who received a DHS letter saying that her family’s information had been stolen. The doctor from whose car the files were stolen was reviewing the eligibility for a Medicaid program of the Burrell’s 3-year-old son, Nicholas.

Since receiving the letter, Burrell said, the family has had to review its credit and bank accounts to see if anybody has used information from the stolen files to steal a family member’s identity and try to profit from it.

Burrell said she is asking establishments where she has accounts about such things as “dates of inquiries, dates of things opened—is there any increases in balances I’m not aware of?”

“The worry, the unknown that somebody has your life history, literally in their hands,” Burrell laments.