EmblemHealth

"We are writing to tell you about a privacy incident involving Group Health, Inc. (GHI), an EmblemHealth company, and what we are doing to protect your personal information.What HappenedEarlier this month, GHI mailed you a copy of your Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Evidence of Coverage (a document that describes the health care benefits covered by your plan and how your plan works). On October 13, 2016, we learned of an unintentional disclosure of your Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN) as a result of this mailing.Our investigation found that, while preparing the Evidence of Coverage documents for mailing, HICNs were inadvertently included in the electronic file sent to EmblemHealth’s vendor and were then disclosed on the external mailing label that was affixed to the package.What Information Was InvolvedGHI is required to assign each member a “mailing identifier” number, which is randomly selected and contains no member information. This mailing identifier helps us keep track of the mailings we send to you. In this instance, the “mailing identifier” that GHI intended to use was mistakenly replaced with your HICN, which mirrors your Social Security number. As a result, your proper name and address appeared on the external mailing label of the evidence of coverage documents, along with the nine digits of your Social Security number that were listed as the package number (PKG#) located above the barcode. At no time were these nine digits identified as your Social Security number and no health information or financial information about you was disclosed."