Fergie's Tech Blog

Medical Data on 75,000 Empire Blue Cross Members May Be Lost - UPDATE

Milt Freudenheim writes in The New York Times:

WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, has begun notifying 75,000 members of its Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield unit in New York that a compact disc holding their vital medical and other personal information had disappeared.

The information was on an unencrypted disc that a subcontractor recently sent to Magellan Behavioral Services, a company in Avon, Conn., that specializes in monitoring and coordinating mental health and substance abuse treatments for insurance companies.

Empire began notifying the affected consumers by mail on Saturday that their records — including their names, Social Security numbers, health plan identification numbers and description of medical services back to 2003 — had been lost.

More here.

UPDATE: 15:43 PDT: Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield was just informed that Magellan Behavioral Health Services has located the CD sent via UPS by Health Data Management Solutions (HDMS), a third party vendor to Magellan, an Empire benefit program administrator, that included some members' personal health information. The CD was lost in transit and was located this afternoon.

posted by Fergie @ 3/14/2007 09:39:00 AM