The electronic survey aimed to ask Rutland Regional patients how the hospital could improve its discharge process, Burlington Free Press reports. However, email addresses were not BCC’ed, and therefore visible to all other recipients.
“When we were alerted to the situation, we immediately terminated the email survey and started an investigation,” a hospital spokeswoman told Becker’s Hospital Review via email. “The only patient information referenced in the email was the individual email addresses.”
Peg Bolgioni, a hospital spokeswoman, declined to comment to Burlington Free Press on whether the email disclosure constitutes a HIPAA violation.
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