TennCare: Health info of up to 3300 people mailed elsewhere

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee’s Medicaid program says health information of up to 3,300 patients were mailed to incorrect addresses.

On Monday, TennCare officials said they, Gainwell Technologies LLC and Axis Direct Inc. have notified beneficiaries that the privacy issue may have impacted their protected health information.

TennCare said its Medicaid management information systems contractor, Gainwell, alerted the state about the issue in October.

An investigation found mailings were misaddressed in late 2019 and 2020 due to a manual processing error related to address changes, the release said. Axis Direct was managing TennCare member mailings in November and December 2019.

“Gainwell is committed to protecting the privacy and safeguarding the personal health information of Medicaid members,” Dave Mason, Gainwell chief operating officer, said in the release. “While we are not aware of any misuse of personal information, we are notifying impacted members about the incident and highlighting the measures we’ve taken to correct the error and the actions we’ve taken to help protect their information.”

TennCare Director Stephen Smith expressed confidence in Gainwell and the process “to identify the error that impacted certain members and correct it.” Gainwell still contracts with Axis Direct, the state said.

Those impacted will receive free credit monitoring for one year.