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.
Veterans In Partnership (VISN 11)
Mentioned in a privacy incident report created by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on March 10, 2011. Also cited in 213 other reports.
Report ID: SPE000000059445, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Reported Entity: VISN 11 Ann Arbor, MI
Issue:
On 02/03/11, the Eligibility Coordinator entered a backlog of approximately 2000 patients into the Enrollment Applications System (EAS), which is a national electronic VistA file that dates back to 2002. Some patients have made address corrections since the original application was completed. The application overwrote the current data and resulted in incorrect patient addresses in the system. This impacted the pharmacy prescription mailings and patients have been complaining that they have not received their medication. Pharmacy, Information Technology Staff, and others are currently reviewing the entire process to determine the extent of the patient information exposure and mismailed medications. Update: 03/14/11: The facility held a conference call on 03/11/11 to determine how many incorrect entries were made into the EAS. Only 1,367 patients had backlogged information entered. Not all of the patients' information was outdated and of those, only a portion had a letter or prescription mailed to them. The total number of patients with mismailed information is not known at this time; however it is currently believed to be between 150 and 300. The facility Privacy Officer is calling an emergency incident response meeting to investigate further. The facility is correcting the outdated information. 03/24/11: Each service in the Medical Center compared all their mailings against the list of addresses that were entered incorrectly. They found the following mismailings: 9 Pharmacy mismailings which included name and medication; 40 appointment reminders which included name and appointment type; 17 billing statements which included full name, address, diagnosis code and date of visit. Sixty-six patients will receive a letter of notification.
Outcome:
Eligibility/Enrollment staff have been retrained to follow the following sequence of events for data entry of each individual eligibility application (link to patient file, print online application, verify signature, file application) in order to prevent a back log of records requiring filing and recurrence of this address incident error.