On Thursday, University of California, Irvine Medical Center, announced that an employee viewed medical information of nearly 5,000 patients 'without a job-related purpose' from June 2011 to March 2015.

Investigation is being carried out. For now, it is not known as to what he has done of the sensitive information, including patient names, birthdays, height and weight, medical record numbers, home addresses, diagnoses, test orders and results, medications and employment status.

Experts have checked the employee's hard drive and e-mail account and did not find any evidence that the information has been downloaded or sent through e-mails. Hospital spokesman John Murray said that they do not think that information including social security numbers, driver's licenses or state ID card numbers or credit card information were accessed or distributed.

However, then also the hospital has been offering free credit monitoring and theft protection for a year to those who have been affected in the breach incident. In March, the hospital authorities informed about the incident to police.

After which investigation started and the employee's access patterns were assessed. Murray refused to comment on whether or not the employee was still working for UC Irvine. But he did tell that the employee no more has access to the hospital's computer systems.

Dr. Vincent Liu said that breaches of health care data are a persistent threat. Liu, study's head researcher, whose research paper was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shared that around 30 million health records nationwide have been impacted due to criminal theft, malicious hacking or other data breaches from 2010 to 2013.