Last week patients started reporting errors that look like a test gone terribly wrong. The subject lines looked like this:
Subject: “[PROOF] – Don’t miss out – call your doctor today; PlanState: CA; Segment: SMALL GROUP; Age: Female Young; Language: EN; CervCancer3yr: N; CervCancer5yr: N; Mammogram: N; Colonoscopy: N”
WellPoint doesn’t seem to be taking the advice of email service providers on how to recover from email mistakes (own it, apologize, move on) as they seem to be in denial:
WellPoint spokeswoman Kristin Binns said that she did not believe the emails constituted a breach of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). She said they are working with the vendor, who she declined to name, who sent the emails on WellPoint’s behalf to resolve the issue.
Source: Reuters
