Agents from the U.S. Postal Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have joined the criminal investigation into the disclosure of the names and addresses of some of the 6,500 HIV/AIDS patients in Palm Beach County, according to the Palm Beach Post.
County Health Department Director Dr. Jean Malecki confirmed that the FBI and postal inspectors have joined the probe of two incidents in which a confidential list of names of those with AIDS or who are HIV-positive may have been used illegally.
In Florida, local health departments are required to keep records of people who have AIDS, now 4,500 in Palm Beach County, and those who carry HIV, the virus that produces AIDS.
City police also are investigating the two incidents.
In the most recent, people on the county health department list received letters postmarked in early March telling them to call a company in Indiana to volunteer to help local families dealing with AIDS.
That company, which does electronic billing for doctors’ offices, had no knowledge of the letter and told callers to contact the health department.
One letter recipient expressed his concern that someone had obtained access to confidential medical information that could subject him to job discrimination and personal harassment.
Concerns about the security of the identities of these patients first surfaced last month when a health department statistician, John Nolan, who compiles the county’s monthly cumulative statistics report on HIV/AIDS cases, sent to 800 health department employees an internal e-mail, inadvertently attaching a file with the names of 4,500 AIDS patients and 2,000 others in the county who have tested HIV-positive.
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