Search Privacy Violations, Breaches and Complaints
This database was last updated in December 2015 ago and should only be used as a historical snapshot. More recent data on breaches affecting 500 or more people is available at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Breach Portal.
VA Mid South Healthcare Network (VISN 9)
Mentioned in a privacy incident report created by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on May 20, 2011. Also cited in 328 other reports.
Report ID: SPE000000062814, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Reported Entity: VISN 09 Nashville, TN
Issue:
The Patient Advocate (Nashville campus) contacted the Privacy Officer (PO) to report this incident. Veteran A received her medications in the mail. A medication label, belonging to Veteran B, was included in the package. The medication label contained Veteran B's full name, address, prescription number, and name of medication. Veteran A informed the Patient Advocate that this is the third incident in which she received medication labels belonging to other Veterans (not Veteran B). Veteran A returned the medication label to the Patient Advocate who forwarded it to the PO. Update: 05/20/11:Veteran B will receive a letter of notification.
Outcome:
The PO investigated and found the incident was due to a human error. Prescription instruction papers print in a batch with no separators between patients. If the employee (who reviews the paperwork) does not carefully check each sheet, a single prescription sheet could get caught up in another patients paperwork. In this case, Veteran B's prescription paperwork printed out as a single sheet and was not separated by the pharmacist when checking Veteran A's prescription. Pharmacy staff has been counseled on the importance of checking prescription paperwork for accuracy before releasing medications to the Veteran.