The lawsuit alleges that an employee began recruiting other Optum employees and patients before he resigned in July as site administrator for an Optum family medicine clinic.
Two former employees stole the confidential medical information of nearly 24,000 patients to benefit a competitor, OptumCare New Mexico alleges in a lawsuit reported by the "Albuquerque Journal."
Giancarlo Martinez accepted a job with Cano Health New Mexico while still employed by Optum, which provides primary and specialty care at 12 clinics in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho. Florida-based Cano Health LLC has 108 medical centers throughout New Mexico, Florida, Texas and Nevada, specializing in senior care.
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The lawsuit alleges that Martinez emailed numerous patient rosters and internal reports to his personal email account. This data contained "a significant volume of highly confidential and proprietary personal and medical information." Martinez and his supervisor at Cano, Shaun Burns, used the information to recruit Optum physicians and patients to switch to Cano Health, the suit alleges.
"As a result, several Optum employees have resigned from Optum to join Cano Health" and were "directed by Martinez to solicit the patients they had treated at Optum's clinics to move to Cano Health," according to the legal action.
Martinez and Burns began recruiting Optum employees and patients before Martinez resigned in July as site administrator for an Optum family medicine clinic. Burns had resigned in September 2020 as Optum's director of clinical operations for primary care. The suit identifies him as Cano Health's regional operations director for New Mexico.
Martinez sent an email from his Optum email address on May 13 containing a "voluminous" file with detailed information about 23,904 Optum patients, the lawsuit alleges. The file contained patients' "physical and mental health issues, conditions and disorders, treatment histories, prescription spending, insurance plan information and other personal data."
The lawsuit asks a judge to order Cano Health to search its computer servers and databases for any Optum data and destroy it. Optum also is seeking a restraining order that would prevent Martinez and Burns from soliciting Optum employees and patients to switch to Cano Health and unspecified damages as determined at trial.
"Optum takes the security of patient and company information very seriously and is taking all appropriate actions to safeguard the data," the company's Amy Knapp said.
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Alan Goforth
Alan Goforth is a freelance writer in suburban Kansas City. In addition to freelancing for several publications, he has written a dozen books about sports and other topics.
