Data breach of Medicaid and Peachcare enrollees

Georgia's Department of Community Health is investigating how private information of roughly 70,000 Medicaid and PeachCare enrollees ended up on a publicly-accessible website. The data included names, birth dates, social security numbers and some medical information of members who get their care through WellCare Health Plans.

Director of Compliance for Georgia's Department of CommunityHealth, Ruth Carr said it was due to human error. "Our foremost concern was making sure all of the affected members were notified as soon as possible," said Carr.

According to a WellCare spokesperson, the information became unsecured on February 12th, when a routine update accidentally removed the security component for the electronic data.

WellCare will offer one year of free credit monitoring to affected Georgians who want it.

Carr said that last year, when patient data stored on a CD was lost in the mail, the Department of Community Health's investigation turned up no result.

Medicaid recipients' information still lost in mail

A Georgia Department of Community Health contractor says a disc containing data on nearly three million former and current Medicaid recipients is still missing.

It has been three months since Affiliated Computer Services sent the disk by two-day mail, and discovered it never reached its destination.

"To date, despite Herculean efforts to find it, the CD has not been found. ACS regrets this, as do I," company vice president John Hammock told the Board of Community Health at a meeting Thursday.

Hammock admits "a mistake was made" when the company failed to encrypt the sensitive information before mailing it. But, he says, there is no evidence the data has been misused.

The state has not canceled its contract with ACS.