Dr’s office sent me someone else’s documents

[Anonymous]

…and I assume the other person (or someone else) got mine.

How can this even happen?! I thought they were all done within secure portals vs sent as attachments in an email? Doesn’t HIPPA require strict procedures for electronic data that should prevent this from happening?

Name, birthdate, address, phone number, email, symptoms, referral info, insurance info, etc. are all on the other person’s documents that were sent to me.

[Anonymous]

It can happen because these things are still all done by people. The most common thing I’ve seen is that 2 people’s records get faxed as one document and the white ke thing winds up in the wrong chart. It is uncommon to see, but does happen. In my practice; envelopes are hand-written by people. Again- not common, but it happens, because medical folks are human and all humans make mistakes.

[Anonymous]

This happened to me when they put my insurance account number on someone else's documents. They actually tried to submit to insurance company but it was rejected. It took many calls to the doctors office to get it straightened out.

[Anonymous]

This happened to me too. They called saying they found something and I needed to come in for a second mammogram. I was like um, I haven’t been in a year…I’m supposed to come in next week for the first one of this year. Scary

[Anonymous]

I fairly recently got someone else’s mail order prescription meds. My address on outside printed mailer but inside wrong meds and name with printed instructions and warnings.

Cigna program. Mailed from Florida. Good thing I’m an honest person; I called to report and ask where my meds were. I was immediately put through to someone who gave me very careful instructions to screen shot all materials received and to send back to what I believe was a Med Error management program director. Or not. Anyway, canceled this “service” and went back to my small-town pharmacy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:…and I assume the other person (or someone else) got mine.

How can this even happen?! I thought they were all done within secure portals vs sent as attachments in an email? Doesn’t HIPPA require strict procedures for electronic data that should prevent this from happening?

Name, birthdate, address, phone number, email, symptoms, referral info, insurance info, etc. are all on the other person’s documents that were sent to me.

HIPAA (not HIPPA) requires good faith effort to prevent this from happening, but there is no system that can totally prevent errors.

The language used is "reasonable diligence" and "willful neglect." When a violation occurs, there are different levels of culpability, and for those that come with a penalty, different levels of penalty based on culpability.

[Anonymous]

Let the office know - they probably have procedures in place for reviewing what went wrong.

[Anonymous]

Yes let them know.
Happened to me years ago. I had a fax machine and one night I woke up to it beeping and thought it was weird and went back to sleep. Woke up to 300 pages of someone's full medical record (I assume said medical records, 300 pages of something. I shredded it. and called the number and reported it but who knows what happened). It was crazy pants though. SO many pages

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let the office know - they probably have procedures in place for reviewing what went wrong.

I work with a lot of medical offices - they don't.

I would pick up the phone and complain. Depending on whether you think they actually will change anything you can fill out this form: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/filing-a-complaint/index.html