Software glitch causes Missouri Medicaid breach
Missouri's state Medicaid program, MO HealthNet, is notifying 1,357 individuals that some of their personal information was mailed to an incorrect address by one of its IT infrastructure management contractors. The disclosure was caused by a software programming error.
According a notice on the agency's webiste, no medical or financial information was released as a result of the inadvertent mailing. The type of information released potentially included participant name, date of birth, MO HealthNet identification account number (DCN), county name, phone number and the last four digits of the Social Security number.
The incident was discovered on June 6. The software programming error impacted some of MO HealthNet Managed Care Program correspondence sent between October 16, 2011, and June 7, 2013. MO HealthNet has since identified and corrected the software error.
MO HealthNet Managed Care is operational in the City of St. Louis and the 53 of the 114 counties of Missouri.
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.