Three John Does filed a federal lawsuit on March 21 claiming that CVS mailed letters last year unintentionally revealing the HIV status of these patients through the clear windows of the envelopes.
The John Does are all clients of Ohio HIV Drug Assistance Program, OhDAP, which has a partnership with CVS. Information about how to access HIV medication through CVS was mailed to about 6,000 OhDAP recipients in the summer of 2017.
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The three plaintiffs live in three different counties of Ohio, but all claim that they have been stigmatized as a result of this breach and that CVS failed to declare the issue as it happened.
"CVS Health places the highest priority on protecting the privacy of those we serve, and we take our responsibility to safeguard confidential information very seriously," CVS Health said in a statement to CNN. "As soon as we learned of this incident, we immediately took steps to eliminate the reference code to the plan name in any future mailings."