Investigate this mix-up

A shipping problem. Those three words, perhaps along with a shrug of the shoulders, seem to sum up an appalling chain of errors that resulted in personal and health information from Florida ending up as scratch paper in the hands of a fourth-grade teacher in Utah.

It's the sort of story that is too absurd to be made up. But it is more than absurd. It's outrageous.

As this newspaper uncovered in a copyrighted story this week, boxes of medical records from Central Florida Regional Hospital were sent to Las Vegas for a Medicare audit. They were sent via UPS. One of them never made it. It got lost in Phoenix. Not only that, it was somehow labeled as "overgoods," meaning it was undeliverable and could be sold as scrap paper. That is exactly what happened, which explains how the box ended up for sale at National Product Sales in Utah.

Sort of. No one seems to be able to actually explain why it got there. UPS officials throw out a lot of public relations about their "very extensive and technologically advanced system" for tracking packages. But they can't explain why that system failed so miserably. The hospital can explain how it wanted to hear a final word from UPS before taking action. But officials there can't explain why they didn't notify the people whose records were involved when they had the first hint that something could be wrong.

Ironically, the same issue of this newspaper included a story about how officials in Garfield County are dealing with the growing problems of identity theft in rural Utah. A lot of people are looking for fake IDs so they can obtain jobs, or so they can obtain credit cards in someone else's name and steal thousands of dollars worth of goods.

Not long ago, the Associated Press reported that about 810,000 Americans were known victims of consumer fraud in 2007, and that 258,000 of these cases involved identity theft. This is a growing plague.

UPS didn't help matters by selling a box of medical records, nor did the hospital by not informing people immediately, so they could begin protecting themselves.

The medical records in question included Social Security numbers, as well as medical histories, phone numbers, addresses and insurance information. That's plenty of information with which to build false identities. The fact many of the patients involved are now deceased makes the information even more desirable to a criminal.

This shipping problem deserves more than just a shrug of the shoulders. It ought to be investigated thoroughly to make sure whatever system failed will not fail again.