About all that HIPAA bull that hospitals and doctor's offices go through every dang day ...
About all that HIPAA bull that hospitals and doctor's offices go through every dang day ...
I hope they sue the heck out of Aetna. Having envelopes with windows bigger than needed just to show an address are stupid. Also, you print just the address on the section that is supposed to show in the window. Content should be on a different part of the trifold. Major screw-up Aetna. Major.
This is egregious because HIV and our society sucks, but any personal health information can be used against people in a discriminatory manner. The only reason this is getting the coverage it is is because it's about HIV. How many other people had other info publicly exposed about other medical concerns? And if it was only the HIV patients, what the actual heck is going on at Aetna, because that suggests something discriminatory, as well.
I've never seen anything this ridiculous and stupid from any financial institution and certainly not with health info. Very bad form.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/25/546048615/aetna-mailer-accidentally-reveals-hiv-status-of-up-to-12-000-patients
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/25/546048615/aetna-mailer-accidentally-reveals-hiv-status-of-up-to-12-000-patients
I hope they sue the heck out of Aetna. Having envelopes with windows bigger than needed just to show an address are stupid. Also, you print just the address on the section that is supposed to show in the window. Content should be on a different part of the trifold. Major screw-up Aetna. Major.
This is egregious because HIV and our society sucks, but any personal health information can be used against people in a discriminatory manner. The only reason this is getting the coverage it is is because it's about HIV. How many other people had other info publicly exposed about other medical concerns? And if it was only the HIV patients, what the actual heck is going on at Aetna, because that suggests something discriminatory, as well.
I've never seen anything this ridiculous and stupid from any financial institution and certainly not with health info. Very bad form.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/25/546048615/aetna-mailer-accidentally-reveals-hiv-status-of-up-to-12-000-patients
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/25/546048615/aetna-mailer-accidentally-reveals-hiv-status-of-up-to-12-000-patients
Holy shit, no.
ReplyDeleteThe way it seems to have happened is bad letter design, combined with the letter sending company (this is almost always outsourced now) using the wrong envelope (or being instructed to use the wrong envelope). Given that, it wouldn't surprise me if this happened specifically in a mailer to their HIV patients. This doesn't sound like a general mailing where this particular one just had HIV filled in.
ReplyDeleteGiven the way this typically works, with a company employee preparing the printable files and then sending it off electronically to a third party that does the printing and envelope stuffing and delivering to the post (all by machine, of course), I don't think there's really any place in the standard process where an error like this would be immediately obvious to a living human being. You pretty much have to just use the right templates.
Which, yes, they clearly should have been paying more attention to.
Fwiw, I have seen many mailers from health stuff and financial stuff, of which insurance companies are both. There are probably only so many places to which they outsource, as these are specialized things with legal consequences attached to them, so the outsourcing companies ought to know better and have better procedures in place, as well. If not, and they just send them to the same places that mail annoying coupons, that's an industry practice that needs to stop asap.
ReplyDeleteSomebody had to load the envelopes into the machine. Meaning somebody is supposed to look at them. If they have oddly large windows, they should not be used. It's like loading a production line for anything where you switch between different products with different containers. Somebody has to check before you start the run.
Layouts should be standardized and come from the company doing the outsourcing. Even if they take a dangerously hands off approach and check nothing that goes to the mailing company, somebody at least in their legal department ought to be checking this stuff once in a while. You never have any other info on the part of the trifold that will face the outside world through the window for exactly this reason.
Because it's about getting your meds, this may be the format that they use for all of their letters on the subject to anyone on any chronic medication. Thus why it is possible it might have not just been HIV patients. But I agree it is possible it could have just been them, and therefore I still call a possibility of discrimination.
This is as bad a screw up as leaking everyone's social security number online with all their personal info. If a single physician's office did this, there'd be federal and other HIPAA and legal stuff that would cost lots of money and land like a ton of bricks.
But it's a great big giant insurance company, who is probably not going to be hit with any penalties or legal action.
This is HORRIFYING.
ReplyDelete