Medical ID Theft: Danger for patients & physicians for all time

According to a recent study by Pamela Lewis Dolan, medical identify theft has become the fastest growing type of identity theft in the world. Medical identity theft became common on the radar of the Medicare, an investigative concern for many other agencies. The study also pointed out that each year approximately 2 million people become victim of identity theft with more than 5,300 health professionals have listed themselves in a federal database that tracks medical identity theft. In recent years, it has become the fastest-growing type of identity theft in the world, according to reports.

According to study Medical ID theft is categorized into two types:

1. The kind that involves a patient's identity being compromised
2. The kind that involves the physician's professional identifiers being stolen.

Both medical ID types could bring professional or financial harm to healthcare professionals. According to a study physicians could be suffering from offences of the Health Insurance Mobility and Responsibility Act if they did not effectively secure the information from being stolen. “Many people don’t know what medical ID theft is, so educating patients on the problems and how to detect it is well worth a physician’s time and the biggest key to detection is education.”, said Shantanu Agrawal, Medical Director for the Center for Program Integrity at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“The key is for health care organizations to have their own anti-fraud procedures and to be vigilant about using them.” said Ponemon. He further elaborated that if you lose your credit card, for example, you can call the bank and they will cancel your current card within seconds and send you a new card with a new number. Use of medical identification isn’t as simple to stop.

Fig. Medical ID Theft