Over a thousand recent patients at Swedish Medical Center's Ballard Campus are being advised to check their credit reports after the personal information of three people was stolen from the hospital.

According to Swedish Medical Center, the three patients may have been the victims of identity theft by a former employee who stole their names, birth dates and Social Security numbers from hospital files.

As a precaution, Swedish has told 1,100 in-patients or day-surgery patients who visited the hospital between June 22, 2006 and Sept. 21, 2006, to watch for any unusual or unauthorized credit activity in their names.

"We have no evidence to indicate that other patients charts were inappropriately accessed or misused, but the only way we can be sure is to contact our recent Swedish/Ballard patients and ask them to check their credit records," said Steve Case, Swedish Medical Center's security manager.

Swedish Medical Center spokesperson Ed Boyle said while only three patients at the Ballard Campus were affected by the theft, the center is casting a wide net to ensure that is the case.

Case, said he could not confirm the employee's identity, but the person was fired on Sept. 21 and is now under investigation by the Seattle Police.

Case said Swedish did not want to alarm people, but wanted to make them aware of the situation. Swedish is providing patients with help in monitoring their credit.

Kroll, a leading risk consulting company has been hired to help patients review their credit records for signs of fraudulent activity. Kroll can also help them restore their credit to pre-theft status. Swedish will pay for the cost of this service.

Boyle said Swedish is being proactive in notifying patients and giving them an effective resource in the Kroll company.

"Kroll is one of the leading companies in ID theft," Case said.

Swedish is also reviewing its internal processes to prevent this from happening in the future.

Any patients affected by this should have received a letter from ID TheftSmart, a service of Kroll.

Swedish emphasizes that patients who did not visit the Ballard Campus outside of the given time period or who were patients at their other facilities were not affected.

Swedish patients who have not received the ID TheftSmart mailing should call 1-800-840-6452.