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Insurance companies in Colorado are ignoring their fiduciary duties with their customers by using confidential information obtained in connection with processing claims for improper purposes. CRS 18-4-412 prohibits obtaining medical information without the patient's authorization (which is considered theft), but insurers find ways to defeat this by claiming that the records were properly obtained in the course of processing a claim (even though later used for an improper purpose) [see A.T. vs. State Farm] or that the information obtained was not what they consider "medical information" [see Correspondence].
Three insurance companies, Travelers, Country Companies, and State Farm are featured in this web site for violating the privacy of individuals. These types of violations could happen to anyone unless the Colorado legislature takes action to amend CRS 18-4-412 to prohibit any contact between insurance companies unless the patient/insured's authorization is obtained, to prohibit the use of information obtained to process a claims for any purpose other than to process that specific claim, and to impose civil and criminal penalties for violations.
There seems to be an "intra-industry" silent code of conduct that condones communications between and among insurance companies, even without proper authorization - the old "you rub my back and I'll rub yours". Insurance companies already share certain information about us by means of a database that subscribing insurance companies may access. It is like a credit reporting agency database but instead of bill paying histories it contains claims histories, containing information such as dates of claims and the nature of claims (but not medical information). They would like that database to provide even more information. Insurance companies believe that they would save themselves a lot of money in settlement and claims payments if they could chat with each other regarding claimant files.
They know they need authorization to contact each other but they do it anyway, expecting never to get caught. If they are caught, they claim that they were only talking about issues that they do not consider confidential. Because the insurance companies will not provide to the claimant tape-recordings of these conversations, there is no way to ensure that the conversations do not stray into unauthorized areas. In one of the cases referenced in this site in CORRESPONDENCE, through pure luck, a Colorado citizen learned that telephonic communications had occurred between her insurance company and the insurance company representing a driver who injured her. Most insureds are unaware of this illegal and unethical practice and never find out about it when it happens.
There should be no inter-insurance company adjuster-to-adjuster chitchat, and an accident victim should not have to allow it. Amending the law will make it illegal for an adjuster to even pick up the phone, fax, e-mail or contact another adjuster without written authorization. This should apply to adjusters within the same company if they are handling different claims (e.g. the PIP adjuster and the UM adjuster).
We cannot and should not trust insurance companies to police themselves with regard to private information. They have already proven themselves to be untrustworthy. Indeed, they oppose laws that protect the privacy of health and medical records.
Please help us enact laws that prohibit insurance companies from obtaining or using any private information without written authorization.
To send a petition to your state and federal elected officials urging them to protect the privacy of your confidential information and records, simply fill out the petition form. This will generate a petition from you to your elected officials, including those elected officials who do not have an e-mail address, and we will send a copy to the Denver Post.
Submitting the form gives Ryman Consulting Inc. authorization to send the completed petition to your state and federal elected officials urging them to protect the privacy of your confidential information.

This site is the property of Ryman Consulting, Inc. Any inquires should be sent to: MedPrivacy@abac.com