I have what? Medical Identity Theft

If you walked into your doctor's office and they put on masks to treat you, you might panic at their reaction.  You later find out they were taking preventative measures due to being diagnosed with TB.  You were diagnosed at a different office, when you visited as a 53 year old Hispanic male smoker who weighed 397 pounds.  You might begin to question why your doctor did not notice this discrepancy in your size, shape, age and ethnicity or wonder how this man's records became part of YOUR medical file. 

The Federal Trade Commission asks, "How would you know if your personal, health, or health insurance information has been compromised?"  Medical identity theft is the newest form of technology driven crime, with over 1.5 million people in the United States affected at a cost of $41.3 billion dollars last year, according to Bloomberg.  Medical identity theft occurs when someone uses your personal information, including your name, birthday, or social security number or uses your health insurance to make fraudulent claims. 

Medical Identity theft is hard to catch and even harder to repair with it taking almost 10 years and over $20,000 to get your identity back.  Physicians, medicare and health insurance companies are not yet equipped to scan for id theft and medical discrepancies when new patients are treated.  To correct your medical records, you will have to locate each unauthorized visit and then go in person to each doctors' office.  When visiting providers to get your data corrected, you will encounter staff who are concerned about HIPAA laws preventing them from modifying the records or providing you copies of the thief's medical data.    To make matters worse, thieves visit an average of 5 different medical offices and often suffer from chronic conditions, which make for a lifetime of tracking down unauthorized services.    

While some victims receive medical bills for unauthorized services or notice strange insurance billings, most often, this form of identity theft goes unnoticed for years.  If you don't receive a bill and it isn't affecting your credit, you might wonder how medical identity theft really affects you and why you should be concerned about this growing problem.  When someone receives medical care under your name and social security number, it gets passed from office to office electronically and stored in databases.  If the thief was treated for a disease, illegal drug use, allergy or other condition, this would be placed in your permanent medical record and you will have a hard time ever getting this information removed.  You run the risk of being diagnosed and treated for incorrect ailments based on your chart and medical history, and doctors may not believe that you never tested positive for a disease.  You must also worry about incorrect blood types, missing drug allergy information and being declared legally dead.  These medical records will affect your ability to get life insurance, health insurance, long and short term care insurance and even employment down the road.  This simple data error can cost you a great deal of time, money and frustration and leave you with very few options for remediation.

To help monitor your medical ID, watch for bills from medical offices that you have never visited, scan your insurance receipts to ensure that you received all of the treatments listed, order a copy of your credit report every six months to scan for any erroneous accounts and review your medical records annually.    When visiting your doctors office verify important personal data including your birthdate, address, phone number, blood type, current medications and allergies, to ensure this information is kept up to date and correct.  Keep your health insurance card safe and destroy it when you receive a new one.  Report any possible thefts to the police, doctors offices and your health insurance immediately.  Health insurers are beginning to create policies that help protect patients and prevent fraudulent charges by allowing the patient to setup a special password which must be submitted with all pre-claims and claims.  If a thief does not have this password they will not be pre-approved for care or admitted to the hospital, helping to limit some of the damage they were previously able to cause.

Lindsay


References

Dolan, Pamela Lewis.  (2012).  Medical ID Theft:  Double Danger for Doctors.  Amed News.  Retrieved from http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2012/08/06/bisa0806.htm.

Federal Trade Commission.  (2010).  Medical Identity Theft.  FTC.  Retrieved from http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/idtheft/idt10.shtm.

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.  (2010).  Identity Theft:  What to Do if It Happens to You.  Retrieved from https://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs17a.htm#18.

Robertson, Jordan.  (2012).  How Medical Identity Theft Can Leave You a Decade of Headaches.  Retrieved from http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-11-08-how-medical-identity-theft-can-give-you-a-decade-of-headaches/.

World Privacy Forum.  (2007).  Medical Identity Theft. Retrieved from http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/medicalidentitytheft.html.