Tufts Health Plan, who offers health insurance plans for Medicare Advantage, individual or group health insurance in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, announced in an April 24 press release that a security breach had exposed the personal information of 8,830 seniors who are Medicare subscribers. The breach was brought to the company’s attention during a federal investigation that as of April 24 was still ongoing.
While Tufts Health Plan has not disclosed the exact method of the breach, they indicated the theft of the information was not the result of hacking, an electronic breach or any IT system vulnerability. Eagle Consulting assumes that paper records were stolen.
The information that was stolen included the names, birth dates and social security numbers of current and former members of the “Tufts Medicare Preferred Program.”
The insurer will provide one year of credit monitoring services and identity theft protection to people impacted by the theft and to Tufts Medicare Preferred members whose information was not stolen. The have also established a dedicated help line to answer questions from those affected.
Tufts Health Plan also indicated they will use this breach as an opportunity to reinforce their existing workplace policies and evaluating if additional safeguards need to be put in place to help prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.
