A Rochester-based home health agency has been fined and sanctioned for violating patients privacy regulations in its attempt to gain new clients.
All American Home Care has accepted to pay a fine of $25,000 to the New York State Attorney General’s office and to prevent utilizing the private information of patients for commercial purposes.
An inquiry by the office discovered that the agency illegally gained personal contact information of sufferers at a competing agency, thus violating patients privacy. It then called those sufferers and inquired them to switch services.
The inquiry concluded that Marco Altieri unlawfully acquired the records when he was CEO of an agency called Angels in Your Home. He left that agency to initiate All American Home Care, and utilized the phone numbers to contact clients to assert them to switch from Angels to AAHC.
In accordance to Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, the actions violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) Privacy Rule. Hence, violating patients privacy. He also claimed that few sufferers became worried that their home health care services might be impacted if they didn’t switch their service provider.
“It’s unacceptable for a home care agency to try to pad its pockets by using patients’ personal data without their consent,” stated Schneiderman. “My office will sustain to hold accountable any company that beaches a patient’s right to privacy, particularly for commercial gain.”
An attorney for Altieri refused to comment on the Attorney General’s actions on the day of Thursday.
The alleged theft of customer data is the subject of a civil lawsuit filed in 2015 by David Wegman, the owner of Angels in Your Home. The suit is reviewing damages for actions involving breaches of fiduciary duties, aiding and abetting breaches of fiduciary duties and unfair competition.
The suit blames that Altieri and other former workers used personal and confidential data in the files of care providers and clients, and that consumers had been told that Angels is going out of business. It said that up to ten Angels consumers had changed their home care agency to All American.
Uncertainties over this activity were first raised in the year of 2015 by the Center for Disability Rights, an advocacy group for individuals with disabilities that heard from its clients about a possible breach of personal data.
Few of those consumers are eligible for the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), which permits people to employ their own care providers as an alternative to skilled nursing facilities. In CDPAP, Medicaid reimburses for the services.
The inaccurate use of data about CDPAP clients and their care providers seems central to the lawsuit.
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