UNC Health Care, a Chapel Hill, N.C.-based health system owned by the state of North Carolina, notified 1,300 prenatal patients of a possible information breach.
These patients, who were seen for prenatal appointments between April 2014 and February 2017, may have completed pregnancy home risk screening forms that were mistakenly sent to local county health departments. These forms may include information like name, address, race, Social Security number and HIV status, among other health-related information.
Pregnancy home risk screening forms are used to collect personal information from Medicaid-eligible prenatal patients; however, a review of the obstetric clinic practices found these informational forms were completed by women who were not eligible for Medicaid.
UNC Health Care is working with the county health departments involved to request paper forms for women not covered by Medicaid be returned to the clinic, while electronic information related to non-Medicaid patients be purged from their electronic information systems.
UNC Health Care has set up a call center to answer patient questions and has offered fraud resolution services to patients who suffer from identity theft as a result of this incident. UNC Health Care also emphasized that all county health departments are subject to federal and state privacy laws regarding protected medical information.
Click here to read the UNC Health Care release.