Medical Identity Theft

Medical identity theft occurs when someone uses a person’s name and sometimes other parts of their identity—such as insurance information—without the person’s knowledge or consent to obtain medical services or goods, or uses the person’s identity information to make false claims for medical services or goods. Medical identity theft frequently results in erroneous entries being put into existing medical records, which may in turn lead to inappropriate and potentially life-threatening decisions by medical staff.

In regards to Medical Identity Theft, this is something you want to make sure you have a handle on, but most monitoring services you use won’t pick up on this form of IDT. According to a report by The World Health Organization this must be something you need to understand and take control of or they wouldn’t have called their report “MEDICAL IDENTITY THEFT: The Information Crime that Can Kill You.”

Medical Identity Theft it’s just the most dangerous form of identity theft, it’s absolutely one of the hardest forms of IDT to fix. If you become a victim of medical ID theft, you have your work cut out for you. You may have 100ths of thousands of dollars you may be responsible for to the institution. You ‘ll need an attorney to change back your medical records which could cost you thousands more and that may not be the end of the nightmare…

A few stories of Medical Identity Theft

• A Boston area psychiatrist made false entries in charts of individuals who were not his patients. He gave individuals diagnoses of drug addiction and abuse, severe epression and numerous psychiatric sessions which they did not actually have, then used their personal information to submit false bills to insurance. The victims, after learning of the crime, had difficulties getting the false information removed from their medical files. One woman told an investigator that she “is concerned about obtaining future health insurance coverage … because her husband is self-employed.

• Another non-patient of the same Boston psychiatrist discovered that his medical record had been falsified to include numerous psychiatric sessions that did not occur and false diagnoses of severe depression.4 He discovered the false diagnoses after he had applied for employment.

• One medical identity theft victim from Florida went for medical treatment and says she found that her medical files had been altered. She said that she discovered that an imposter had caused false entries on her file, including changes to her blood type.

• An Ohio woman, while working at a dental office, accessed protected patient information and used the information to phone in prescriptions to area pharmacies. According to the Office of Inspector General, Health and Human Service, she “called in prescriptions in her name as well as the names of Medicaid recipients.

• In another case, a Missouri identity thief used multiple victims’ information to establish false drivers’ licenses in their names. The thief entered a regional health center, acquired the health record of the victim she was impersonating at the time, and intentionally altered the records in order to obtain a prescription in the victim’s name.

• A Pennsylvania man discovered that an imposter used his identity at five different hospitals to receive more than $100,000 worth of medical treatment. At each hospital, the imposter created medical histories in the victim’s name.

• Victims in Southern California were given medical tests by non-physicians and had false diagnoses inserted into their medical files by a sophisticated, organized network of medical imaging companies. The individuals, according to an indictment, actively recruited Medicare beneficiaries with the promise of free transportation, food, and medical care. The perpetrators, posing as doctors and health professionals, obtained the victim’s personal information and photocopied the victim’s Medicare cards. The operation raked in $909,000 using victims’ personal and insurance information.

Medical identity theft is not as well known as financial identity theft yet. Some of its victims have certainly taken note of it, as have some health care providers.

* Learn more: Privacy Laws: Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
* Dealing With Medical Identity Theft