Posted on 08/25/2017 8:21:14 AM PDT by Silentgypsy
Thousands of people with HIV received mailed letters from Aetna last month that may have disclosed their HIV status on the envelope.
The letters, which Aetna said were sent to approximately 12,000 people, were meant to relay a change in pharmacy benefits. Text visible through a small window on the envelopes listed the patients’ names and suggested a change in how they would fill the prescription for their treatment for the virus.
“People have been devastated. We’ve had a number of people tell us they had chosen not to disclose their HIV status to family members — but this is how their family members found out,” said Sally Friedman, legal director at Legal Action Center, which is pushing Aetna to correct the mistake and which highlighted the violation Thursday.
“People with any private health conditions can just imagine, whether you’re being treated for cancer or a behavioral condition, just imagine having that flat out on the front of an envelope for anyone to see. It should be a grave concern to everyone,” she added.
(Excerpt) Read more at statnews.com ...
HIPPA is a useless bureaucratic mess, costing business billions and increase costs for us all. Good intention. Bad practice.
lulz
Yeah, no kidding.
I remembered an earlier post about this, did a title search for HIV, found it, noticed it was from a different source and posted the link. You object to this?
Pozzed
At least they didn’t show the last four digits of the SSN...(I hope) /s
Not at all. I searched for the title only. You taught me to do a title and keyword search before posting and I appreciate it. If I sounded nasty, it was most certainly unintentional.
It’s usually best to search on one, possibly two words from the title and choose “order by post time.”
Using this article as an example, I would search on hiv and envelope.
FWIW, I rarely do keyword searches since keywords are done freehand. Too many variables.
I don’t even recall seeing “order by post time.” Will make it a point to use that method from now on. Thanks!
:)
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