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GREENSBORO — Personal information from more than 14,000 Moses Cone Health System patients might have been compromised after a laptop computer was stolen, hospital officials said Monday.

The computer contained information about cardiology and orthopedic patients treated at Moses Cone Memorial Hospital or Wesley Long Community Hospital from February 2004 to February 2009. In some cases Social Security numbers were included.

The laptop was stolen from a vendor in Georgia on March 9, Moses Cone officials said. The hospital was alerted March 13 and waited a month to make the theft public and begin informing patients. Hospital employees were alerted to the theft in an e-mail Monday morning.

Lynne Matthews, compliance and privacy officer for Moses Cone Health System, said the hospital regrets the delay in informing employees and the public. She said they wanted to mail specific information to affected patients and have a Web site ready to serve them before making an announcement about the theft.

“This is the first time anything like this has happened here,” Matthews said. “We take great care to keep our patient information safe.”

Matthews said an outside vendor, VHA, was reviewing the information to help the hospital improve care and reduce costs. The computer was stolen from the VHA facility in Canton, Ga.

Canton police and hospital officials said they believe the computer — and other equipment — was stolen for money and not for the purposes of identity theft. The computer was password-protected but was not encrypted, Matthews said.

“The information was stored in a very sophisticated program someone would have to know how to use in order to make sense of it,” Matthews said. “It took us two days to get the information put together so we could use it, and we knew what we were doing.”

Officials at Moses Cone would not comment on which patients were affected, citing federal privacy laws. The hospital has mailed letters to the affected patients, offering one free year of credit monitoring and insurance protection against identity theft by CSIdentity Protector Service. Matthews said affected patients should receive letters by April 20. Hospital officials said those with questions or concerns should call CSIdentity Services at (877) 274-1430.

“I just don’t know why they would have let that information leave the hospital, or leave the secure hospital computer,” said Jeffrey Marlin, a Greensboro man who said he was an orthopedic patient at Moses Cone last summer. “If you can’t figure out a better way to treat patient information and Social Security numbers than to put them on a laptop and carry them around, you don’t have real security.”

Marlin said he isn’t yet sure if his information was compromised but said he was angry that the hospital waited a month to let patients know there was a danger.

“These days, when people have your medical records and your Social Security number, a month is like a year,” Marlin said. “You can’t leave people in the dark that way.”

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com