Substitute Notice of a Breach

Upham’s Community Care – PACE (Upham’s PACE) is committed to maintaining a safe and secure environment for its employees, participants, and caregivers, including the protection of personal identifying information stored at Upham’s PACE facilities and used in service delivery and coordination.  Many security features and protocols, as well as confidentiality policies and procedures, are in place to maintain this secure environment. Unfortunately, recent circumstances (detailed below) have resulted in a breach of information.

• The approximate date of the information breach was: October 18, 2024

• Upham’s PACE staff became aware of this breach: October 18, 2024

• The breach occurred due to the following circumstances: A member of the Upham’s PACE care team misplaced a binder in the Columbia Road, Dorchester area that contained printed information about some participants, including the name(s) of their primary/emergency contact(s), and in some cases, additional contact information for the primary/emergency contact (either a phone number or address or both).   

• Upham’s PACE has taken the following actions in response to this breach of information:

• The missing status of the binder was identified by the Upham’s PACE employee and reported to their supervisor immediately.

• The incident was documented (for investigation and corrective action).

• The employee who misplaced the binder was instructed to prepare for future patient care sessions in a different way that does not involve printed/paper material and disciplinary action was taken.

• A letter has been sent to each participant identified in the missing binder contents to provide notification.

• A letter has been sent to each primary or emergency contact [of a participant whose information sheet was in the misplaced binder] whose address we have on file.

  • There are some primary or emergency contacts for whom we do not have an address on file. As such, this substitute notice is posted to the Upham’s PACE website.

There are both State and Federal laws that require Upham’s PACE to provide this notice when we experience an information breach and when we know, or have reason to know, that a person’s identifying information was or could be acquired or used by an unauthorized person or for an unauthorized purpose.

We hope you find the above information helpful.  We sincerely apologize for any worry and/or inconvenience this unfortunate incident may have on you.  Please be assured that we are handling this matter with great attention and detail and will continue to employ safeguards to protect the identifying information of our participants.

If you have any questions or concerns or would like to know if your information as a participant’s emergency contact was involved in this breach, please feel free to call or email: Nancy Roach, Chief PACE Program Officer [617-288-0970 x 8803  · [email protected]]