A big envelope stuffed with billing paperwork for Anchorage ambulance patients mistakenly ended up in a lost-package auction last week in Atlanta.
An Alabama couple buying books got more than they bargained for when they discovered the stack of Medicare claims full of private patient information. The documents -- in an envelope with no address or return address -- include names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, medicines and the medical condition that led to them being transported by ambulance.
"I don't think I need to say what a dishonest individual could do with these," Lizz Shepherd of Madison, Ala., near Huntsville, wrote in an e-mail. She contacted the Daily News because she wasn't sure how to handle such sensitive lost mail.
She and her husband, Dale, run a business buying and selling books called The Waxing Moon Inc. They found that auctions run by the U.S. Postal Service are a good source of inventory.
Auctions of undeliverable packages happen every few weeks in Atlanta and attract bidders from around the country, according to the Postal Service.
Private letters are not auctioned and private medical records shouldn't be either, said Postal Service spokesman Paul Harrington in Washington, D.C. There's no way to know how the priority mail envelope ended up in a giant box of books, he said.
"Clearly, a mistake happened," he said.
Anything of value from parcels that can't be delivered and that don't have a good return address can be sold, he said. Materials also may end up in an auction because they were damaged and refused by the receiver.
Lost packages and letters wind up at mail recovery centers in St. Paul, Minn., and Atlanta. Workers there can open them to try find a clue where they should go, Harrington said.
The Postal Service must wait at least 90 days before auctioning off contents; for packages that were insured, registered or sent COD, people get a year to reclaim them, Harrington said. All of the goods are consolidated in Atlanta for the auctions.
The envelope, postmarked Oct. 8, held 28 patients' Medicare claims that all contained an address in Palmer, Lizz and Dale Shepherd said.
That address is home to Fosselman & Associates, CPAs Inc., which handles billings for ambulance services provided by Anchorage Fire Department medics. The stack includes billings for patients with chest pains, loss of consciousness, ankle injuries and other health issues.
It costs $450 for ambulance service with basic life support and $550 with advanced life support, according to the Fire Department.
Medicare claims are supposed to be sent to Fargo, N.D., and the company usually stamps the address either directly onto the envelope or onto a label first, according to Amy Levinson, director of support services for Fosselman.
Nothing like this has ever happened before, and the company has processed almost 57,000 Anchorage ambulance billings involving 330,000 pieces of mail, Levinson said. The claims cannot be sent electronically because they must include a copy of the ambulance transport document, she said.
The Fire Department has contracted with Fosselman since 2000 and it has an excellent record collecting most of what is owed for ambulance service, said Deputy Chief Soren Threadgill.
The envelope at issue was sealed but didn't look as though it had ever had a label and there was no address on it, Dale Shepherd said.
It was hidden in a huge box containing about 2,000 books, including Nancy Drew mysteries, a guide to pregnancy and various textbooks, that the Shepherds won with a $1,200 bid, he said.
"It was buried way deep," Shepherd said.
The couple discovered the envelope as they were transferring the books into smaller totes and figured it was a book too.
Only a small portion of postal packages end up lost and auctioned off, Harrington said, though he was unable to provide figures.
He wishes the couple had called the Postal Service directly. A carrier could come pick up the lost envelope right away, he said.
Shepherd said that he planned to get in touch with the Postal Service but that the couple probably would send the package directly to the Fire Department's billing agent.
"That's the best chance of it getting where it needs to be," Lizz Shepherd said.
People can avoid their packages being lost in shipment by making sure the destination address is clearly marked. Bar codes and old wording on reused boxes should be marked through. Include a return address, and put the address information inside the package too, Harrington said.
As for the ambulance claims, they may already have been taken care of. Medicare usually pays up within 60 days, and if no payment or denial is received by then, the billing company will call Medicare to sort it out, Levinson said.
Daily News reporter Lisa Demer can be reached at ldemer@adn.com and 257-4390.
