New Brunswick's privacy commissioner has reprimanded the Department of Health for failing to adequately test its massive medicare data system following a 2011 overhaul.

Anne Bertrand, the province's privacy commissioner, said the health department "failed to assess or foresee the impact" of changes to producing and distributing the cards. (CBC) resulted in 114 medicare cards being sent to the wrong addresses and 24 households receiving multiple cards, some belonging to other families. A technical failure

The error meant the full names, birth dates and medicare numbers were provided to strangers.

Hundreds of other New Brunswickers didn't receive their cards because production had to be temporarily halted. This information was only revealed after CBC News contacted the department in January 2014.

Anne Bertrand, the province's privacy commissioner, ruled on March 13 this was a preventable breach of privacy.

"We find that the department failed to assess or foresee the impact such a change could have on future data extracts for the purpose of producing and distributing new Medicare cards to residents," the report said.

Bertrand also said the 34 cards that are still missing, bring home the point that once private information is made public, it's almost impossible to undo what's been done.

"This illustrates the difficulties in retrieving personal information after it has been misdirected or even lost, and the issues of possible harm to individuals' identity and privacy that linger and the need to prevent such an incident from taking place in the first instance," the report said.

Data entry glitch

A Department of Health error resulted in 114 medicare cards being sent to the wrong addresses and 24 households receiving multiple cards, some belonging to other families. (CBC) According to Bertrand’s report, the department earmarked the data field as a potential problem when it started its modernization of the system in 2011. But it was missed.

The information field that assigns individual numbers to New Brunswickers’ addresses was only six digits long. But on Nov. 27, 2013, the counter rolled over to household number 1,000,000, a seven-digit number.

The computer automatically truncated any numbers above 999,999 so that 1,000,010 was read as 100,001, and assigned it to the wrong mailing address.

That error started a domino effect. The incorrect numbers were automatically sent to Medavie Blue Cross in Quebec, which processed the cards and then it went to CPI, the company that printed the cards.

Someone contacted the department on Dec. 6 to say they had received not only their own cards, but others as well. It was another week before the department realized there was a serious problem.

On Dec. 11, they launched an in-depth examination.

The department said it tried to telephone all of those affected and then sent letters to the correct addresses. They were able to recover 80 of the 114 misdirected cards. However, 34 remain missing.

The Department of Health says none of the missing cards have been used.

(DISCLOSURE: CBC reporter Catherine Harrop and her husband were among the New Brunswickers who were involved in the medicare card breach.)