Essential Care Partners

Complaint: ***
I am rejecting this response because:The response from *** *** is on letterhead from Essential Care Partners but his title is with Collaborative Health Services which is a branch of Universal AmericanHow many companies have by data?They state I had the opportunity to opt- out of data sharing when I joined the ACOA call to my Doctor's office revealed they had never heard of Essential Care Partners and they had given me no forms to fill out joining or opting out of an ACOA call to the Frontera Healthcare System also revealed that no one in the office had heard of Essential Care and they had not given me any forms to join or opt-out of the ACO.In addition, Essential Care has given me no form to enroll in or opt-out of their program.I have received written confirmation from Medicare that they will not share any more of my data with Essential Care.I have requested that Essential Care remove my name and any data regarding my records from their systemTheir customer representative , ***, informed me on the phone that they could not do that.Due to the fact they have been untruthful in their response, I am still requesting they remove my data from their system and notify me when that has been doneI will be meeting with my Congressman in person this coming Thursday afternoon and I am sure the topic of ACOs and Essential Care in particular will come up
Regards,
*** ***

April 29, 2015To Whom It May Concern,This is in response to compliant *** submitted on April 22,
to the Revdex.com of Central, Coastal, Southwest Texas and the
Permian BasinFrontera Healthcare System is a federally qualified health
center that is part of an
Accountable Care Organization (ACO) named Essential
Care Partners (ECP)ACOs were created by the federal Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services to coordinate care for fee-for-service Medicare
beneficiaries.ACOs, including ECP, must comply with
extensive federal regulations that govern their activities, These regulations
specify the type of beneficiary-specific data Medicare will provide to ACOs and
the process an ACO must go through to ensure that each beneficiary has the
opportunity to opt out of this data sharingAll data that we receive from CMS
is held with the strictest confidentiality and security, as required by CMS
Mr*** was given the opportunity to opt-out of data sharing when he
joined the ACOAt that time, he neither contacted us nor Medicare to opt out
As a result, Medicare followed the guidance in federal regulations and began
sharing his data with ECPMr, *** now notes that he has contacted
Medicare and opted out of the ACO and is awaiting formal notice from themWe
have no control over that noticeWe have, however, similarly communicated his
request to Medicare to ensure that we do not receive any more of his data.We note that the phone number *** is the number Medicare
uses consistently as the preferred method for contacting it (see http://www.cms.***ndex.html)ECP has no
knowledge of the phone calls Mr*** has received regarding medical
suppliesWe do not share CMS information with any entity for marketing
purposesTo our knowledge, no one has obtained our Medicare data through
hacking or through an data breach by our staff.We hope this
addresses all of Mr***'s concernsIf there any further questions or
concerns, please contact the ECP Compliance Officer, David Gross, at
914-597-2938.Regards,*** ** ***Executive
DirectorCollaborative
Health Systems