There's an email making the rounds with a cheerful subject line: "Your MyChart Medicare Kit Awaits!" It looks like it's from your patient portal. It isn't. It's a phishing scam — and it's spread widely enough that 41 health systems around the country have put out warnings about it, according to Becker's Hospital Review.
The setup
The emails — and texts, too — promise a free "MyChart Medicare Kit" or "Senior Health Package." Some versions call it a senior wellness package. Whatever the wrapper, the mechanics are the same: the Association of Health Care Journalists reports the scammers want you to click a malicious link or hand over personal details, and what they're really after is your personal and financial information.
Why MyChart? Because the name carries trust. It's the portal millions of people already use to message their doctor and check lab results, so an email wearing its logo gets the benefit of the doubt. Add "Medicare" and "free," target the people most likely to use both, and you've got bait that works.
The tell that ends the whole thing
Memorize this one fact, confirmed in Gizmodo's reporting: MyChart doesn't send Medicare kits. There's no such thing. These messages don't come from MyChart, or from Epic (the company that makes it), or from your health system. Full stop.
That's what makes this scam beatable. You don't have to squint at each email wondering if this one's legit. None of them are. If it offers a free kit from your patient portal, it's fake — every time.
What to do with the email
The advice from health systems like Virtua, SSM Health and UMass Memorial is refreshingly unanimous: delete it. Don't open the attachment, don't click the link, don't reply. If you're curious, check the sender's address — it won't match your health system's real domain. Sloppy grammar is another tell. And any unsolicited "free" offer involving Medicare should start from a place of deep suspicion.
One more thing, courtesy of SSM Health: the same con is arriving by phone now. If someone calls about Medicare and offers a free kit, hang up. Same scam, different channel.
Why you're seeing it now
Timing. Ritter Insurance Marketing, which tracks Medicare fraud, says these fake kit messages are climbing through late summer into fall — exactly when seniors expect real Medicare mail and enrollment chatter. Scammers ride the calendar. Their lure works best when the legitimate version of it is already in your mailbox.
Already clicked? Don't panic — move.
If you typed in a password, change it now, starting with your patient portal and your email. If you shared card or bank details, call your bank and keep an eye on statements. And from here on, get to MyChart only by typing the address yourself or opening the official app — never through a link someone emailed you.
Pass it on
Honestly, the most useful thing you can do with this article is send it to the person in your life most likely to get that email. This scam runs entirely on borrowed trust — a real portal's name wrapped around a gift that doesn't exist. The defense fits in one sentence: your patient portal will never email you a free Medicare kit. Anyone who says otherwise is phishing, and the delete button is the only response they've earned.
Image: Vitaly Gariev, via Pexels
