Posted on 02/21/2005 5:29:41 AM PST by Alissa
WEST PALM BEACH — A highly confidential list of the names and addresses of 4,500 Palm Beach County residents with AIDS and 2,000 others who are HIV positive was e-mailed Thursday to more than 800 county health department employees.
Health department statistician John W. "Jack" Nolan, who compiles data on HIV/AIDS cases for the county, sent the e-mail containing his monthly cumulative statistics report and inadvertently attached a file with the identities and addresses of AIDS patients and others who have tested HIV positive. Health department spokesman Tim O'Connor confirmed the incident.
Nolan, a veteran health department employee, called in sick Friday and could not be reached for comment Saturday at his home.
If made public, release of the information could have devastating effects on the lives of people with AIDS or who are HIV positive, said Tony Plakas, the executive director of COMPASS, a Palm Beach County gay and lesbian advocacy organization. It also would violate federal patient privacy regulations.
"My first reaction is shock and fear," said Plakas, a former HIV specialist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's national AIDS Clearinghouse. "I wish we could say that the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS has faded and disclosing that someone is affected would be the same as any other communicable disease, but that is not the case."
O'Connor said the health department has launched a "full and major investigation" personally headed by health department Director Dr. Jean Malecki. Malecki also asked the state health department's inspector general to independently investigate the incident.
Malecki said Saturday night, "This will be a very, very aggressive internal investigation. So far we believe this information has not gone beyond the health department. It was an obvious error in a secured technical environment."
She said the list was "surveillance information" that allows the health department to track HIV/AIDS individuals "to protect them and the public."
Malecki said when her probe is complete it will ensure that "this will never, ever happen again."
Statistician Nolan "within five minutes" recognized his error and contacted the department's computer specialists who shut down the agency's e-mail system for "about an hour" Thursday and "scrubbed the system," removing all copies of the HIV/AIDS e-mail and its attachments from the system, O'Connor said.
"We don't know the number of people who opened the attachment, but it appears to our information technology staff that only 10 people opened the e-mail," O'Connor said. "We have already contacted most of them and will contact the others Monday.
"If this was deliberate, it would be a criminal offense," O'Connor confirmed, "But it appears to be totally inadvertent. . . . A person made a mistake. This poses no public health threat. We don't believe any harm has been done, but that doesn't mean we're not taking this very, very seriously. It shouldn't have happened and we want to make sure it can never happen again."
O'Connor said he did not know specifically which state laws would prohibit the release of such information, but the department's legal staff is checking.
Plakas, who said he knows Nolan from his work with COMPASS' HIV/AIDS case management program that assists 300 people with the illness, said Nolan is "a caring individual." But, he said, "this illustrates that it should not be this easy to send out personal medical information. Unfortunately the reality is if you identify someone as having AIDS or as HIV positive it raises all sorts of negative questions about whether they are drug users, engage in prostitution or are homosexual. That's why there are laws making this information confidential.
"It looks like the health department did everything in their power to correct the mistake. But this is a serious breach," Plakas said.
O'Connor said all health department employees must sign a confidentiality agreement as a condition of employment that prohibits the release of any information on the identity of individuals suffering from communicable diseases tracked in the public health system. Health department staffers also are required to complete a training class on client confidentiality.
O'Connor said Nolan has been reassigned to directly report to Malecki and assist in her investigation of the incident.
Since public health officials began tracking AIDS cases in Palm Beach County in 1980, more than 4,500 people have died from complications caused by the disease, O'Connor said. HIV/AIDS may be transmitted by contact with infected bodily fluids during sexual contact, sharing of contaminated needles or transfusion of infected blood.
The state health department reports that one of every 173 people in Palm Beach County has AIDS or is HIV positive; 6,555 of the county's 1.13 million residents are now living with HIV/AIDS.
Added benefit, the transmission rate ought to decrease a bit.
I have always thought that the Right to Privacy is vastly overrated in communicable diseases. Personally I think that everyone with a sexually transmitted disease should have their names in the paper three times as a fair warning to others.
hmmmmmmmm........why do I find that line funny?
Heaven forbid the public should know who is carrying a deadly contagious disease!
Wonder if the names were on Paris Hilton's cell phone...
Damn "Reply All" button strikes again.
I wonder if it was an Excel chart pasted into Word. At work, we learned long ago not to do that becasue the whole spreadsheet gets attached, even though only the chart is visible. We discovered this when another company we work with e-mailed us a 4MB, one page report in Word with simple charts from Excel embedded in the default excel chart format. Clicking on the chart opened a huge spradsheet with a lot of sensitive information. That's why the filke was so huge. Word to the wise, we always paste objects as pictures to avoid this. If this is the case, it's a big, unintentional OOPS.
You have to call in sick....... They don't take you seriously when you call in well.
What is it with Palm Beach County? Are they the only area of the country immune to HIPPA?
LOL! In the same (Palm Beach) county too!
The "Privacy" regulations must be changed.
Oooh Oooh! And after that we can put bells round their necks and tattoo 'unclean' on their foreheads.
I think people are entitled to a bit of privacy with these things, no matter how they caught the disease. Contrary to the occasional tabloid report, most people with STDs refrain from bonk-rampages once diagnosed.
"Let me see, 4500 HIV/AIDS patients have a right to medical privacy and who doesn't?"
That would be Rush Limbaugh, no?
Anyway, let's call all the people in Paris Hilton's address book and tell them about these other victims of "privacy invasion" and call it a day!
"Now consider prions."
I have considered them, and find them dreadful. Cannabalism, always a bad idea, no matter your species.
I have eaten so much raw hamburger, I am only wondering if mad-cow will get me before the booze and tobaccy do.
Want to blame someone? BLAME BILL GATES! - Louden Wainwright III
"Let me see, 4500 HIV/AIDS patients have a right to medical privacy and who doesn't?"
Let's add a couple more communicable diseases to that list of people's whose names should be published, shall we? Herpes, pneumonia, tuberculosis, mono...
Darn right ... it's a public health benefit for more people to know who is carrying a deadly disease. Duh!
This kind of leapt off the page at me. 'Bout time health officials start thinking about protecting the public.
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