The number of patients in MS center of st Louis and the MC Neurology County and town. All these patients were informed that the marketing teams of pharmaceutical companies may contact them for the research purpose. The teams may belong to the third parties. According to the authorized party, they are not permitted to contact them, but still there are some chances that the marketing teams may contact them.
According to the HIPAA rules, no marketing or the research team are permitted to contact the patients for research purpose, until or unless they got permission from the authorized party. However, if any of the researching team may found any issue or the problem in the patient’s information, then they may contact them patient to solve the problem. In this case, the contact is only possible with the help of telephone, or an email.
The MC Necrology County and Town and the MS center reported that all the medicines written on the onboarding form were un-intentionally provided to the pharmaceutical companies, even the forms were unsigned. This error shows that the protected information of the patient was disclosed. The information details on the protected health section on the forms include the name of the patients, the email address, the home address, the telephone number, and information on health insurance, prescription information, the treatment process and the SS numbers.
All the sensitive information was disclosed and this information can also be used improperly, although MC Necrology County and Town and the MS center claimed that this information has not been used for any other purpose than research and marketing. Just because of this, all the affected patients are provided with an opportunity to get 12 months credit monitoring and information stealing protection services without any fee.
After discovering the issue, the internal investigation started and all the potential staff was questioned about the issue. In order to save all the problems and issues in the future, all the procedures and policies has been changed.