California's Department of Managed Healthcare has fined Kaiser Permanente $450,000 for sending mailings with enrollees' private health information to incorrect addresses.
According to a June 15 news release from the department, Kaiser Permanente Health Plan sent 337,755 mailings to 167,095 potentially outdated addresses between October and December 2019. The incorrect mailings were sent because of an error in the plan's EHR system.
Of the mailings, 1,788 were returned unopened, and eight recipients contacted Kaiser Permanente to say they were not the intended recipients.
Kaiser Permanente agreed to pay the department's fine and has taken corrective actions, including informing affected enrollees, updating its software systems and conducting periodic checks of member's current addresses.
"Kaiser Permanente takes the protection of our members' personal and health information seriously and continuously works to safeguard data. Between October and December 2019 more than 300,000 mailings to approximately 167,000 Southern California members were sent to potentially outdated member addresses due to an error that occurred when updating mailing addresses in our information systems," a Kaiser Permanente spokesperson said in a statement shared with Becker's. "None of these mailings included Social Security numbers or financial information. Upon learning of the error, we immediately corrected our systems and future mailings. At this point, all necessary corrective action has been completed."