Scores of confidential documents containing medical and financial information about people applying for state benefits wound up in a Seattle warehouse after clients used an incorrect fax number to send the paperwork, a newspaper reported Friday.

While it isn't clear why people used the wrong number, it took the Texas Health and Human Services Commission more than three weeks to seriously check into the warehouse's complaints that they were receiving the confidential faxes, the Houston Chronicle reported.

"It was an error on our part that we did not complete our investigation of this information more quickly," agency spokeswoman Gail Randall said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Applications for Medicaid, food stamps, low-cost children's health insurance and welfare started showing up in Seattle three months ago, warehouse clerk Shaun Peck told the newspaper. They included everything from Social Security numbers and medical evaluations to income tax forms and pay stubs.

The toll-free fax numbers for the warehouse and the contractor that processes such applications are identical other than the area code. The Texas Access Alliance's area code is 877, while the warehouse's is 800.

Peck didn't know how many applications they'd received, roughly guessing a dozen a week. Workers shredded some, he said, and manually stopped the fax machine from printing others. They even tried contacting the return fax numbers listed on the cover sheets, only to wind up talking to clerks at office and printing stores that couldn't figure out which customers had sent them.

The warehouse manager finally asked the woman who manages their Yellow Pages account to help figure out what was going on. She told Texas officials about the problem on May 9. And on May 25, she directly contacted the contractor in charge of processing the applications.

Yet it took the state and its contractor until Wednesday to begin seriously investigating and fixing the problem, the newspaper reported.

Randall said the state and TAA found one internal document that had the incorrect fax number, but the mistake was not included in any client correspondence. She said the clients may have misdialed since the numbers are so similar.

Accenture, the Bermuda-based technology consulting firm that leads the group of companies that make up the TAA, said in a statement that its thorough investigation led to actions that should stop faxes from landing in Seattle.
TAA spokeswoman Jill Angelo did not immediately return a telephone call from the AP.

The mix-up is the latest problem to emerge from the privatization of the state's benefits eligibility system. The state plans to replace 99 of its 310 eligibility offices with four call centers run by the TAA.

In the months since the transition began, lawmakers have complained about the contractor's performance, enrollment in the Children's Health Insurance Program has plummeted and clients have complained that their applications have been lost at the call centers.
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