Wrong fax number lands Texans' private information in Seattle

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

AUSTIN, Texas -- Scores of confidential documents containing medical and financial information about people applying for state benefits wound up in a Seattle warehouse after clients used an incorrect fax number to send the paperwork, a newspaper reported Friday.

While it isn't clear why people used the wrong number, it took the Texas Health and Human Services Commission more than three weeks to seriously check into the complaints from the Take Care Store warehouse that they were receiving the confidential faxes, the Houston Chronicle reported.

"It was an error on our part that we did not complete our investigation of this information more quickly," agency spokeswoman Gail Randall said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Applications for Medicaid, food stamps, low-cost children's health insurance and welfare started showing up in Seattle three months ago, warehouse clerk Shaun Peck told the newspaper. They included everything from Social Security numbers and medical evaluations to income tax forms and pay stubs.

Other than the area code, the toll-free telephone number for the warehouse is almost identical to the toll-free fax number for the state contractor that processes such applications. The Texas Access Alliance's area code is 877, while the warehouse's is 800.

The warehouse telephone had a feature that automatically forwarded faxes from their phone line to their fax machine. After talking with the TAA, the warehouse disconnected that feature, contractor spokeswoman Jill Angelo said.

Peck didn't know how many applications they'd received, roughly guessing a dozen a week.

Workers shredded some, he said, and manually stopped the fax machine from printing others.

They even tried contacting the return fax numbers listed on the cover sheets, only to wind up talking to clerks at office and printing stores that couldn't figure out which customers had sent them.

The warehouse manager finally asked the woman who manages their Yellow Pages account to help figure out what was going on. She told Texas officials about the problem on May 9. And on May 25, she directly contacted the contractor in charge of processing the applications.

Yet it took the state and its contractor until Wednesday to begin seriously investigating and fixing the problem, the newspaper reported.

Randall said the state and TAA found one internal document that had the incorrect fax number, but the mistake was not included in any client correspondence. She said the clients may have misdialed since the numbers are so similar.

In a statement, Angelo said TAA has collected all the documents that warehouse workers didn't shred. She estimated the number of faxes sent to the wrong number amounted to less than 1 percent of the total number of faxes the agency has received since the beginning of 2006.

The mix-up is the latest problem to emerge from the privatization of the state's benefits eligibility system. The state plans to replace 99 of its 310 eligibility offices with four call centers run by the TAA.

In the months since the transition began, lawmakers have criticized the contractor's performance and clients have complained that their applications have been lost at the call centers.

Anne Dunkelberg, a senior policy analyst with the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, told the AP the mix-up is one example of literally dozens of different kinds of technical problems clients are having with the contractor and the new eligibility system.

"It's a real shame ... that yet another technical problem is getting in the way of people getting the benefits that they qualify for," she said.

The TAA also recently took over processing applications and renewals for the state's low cost-insurance program for the working poor. Enrollment in the Children's Health Insurance

Program has fallen every month since December, with nearly 30,000 children leaving the rolls since then.

The commission announced Friday that total enrollment for June was 293,564, down from 298,776 in May.

Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins said 8,600 children who were enrolled in CHIP were eligible for Medicaid and were being moved to those rolls without any disruption in their coverage. He said 5,000 children were leaving CHIP because their family's income was too high.

Notice where that came from. Texas HHSC is famous! (how embarrassing...)