Summary: The Importance Of Medical Identity Theft

Figuring out if an identity is stolen is not easy only because it can be unknown until damage is dealt. This is why identity theft isn’t easy to stop. When most people report a crime, police arrive on the scene before serious damage is dealt, but when a thief steals a person’s identity, the victim can be unaware for quite some time before they realize the amount of money they lost. According to Tracey Whittaker and Anne Dilascio, in 2003, the average money lost from identity theft per person was $4,789, but in 2006 the average was less than $2000. The average out-of-pocket cost of identity theft victims in 2005 was

When confidential patient information is disclosed without consent it is a violation of the HIPAA Title II Security Rule. This rule was enacted in response to private information being leaked to the news and emails containing privileged information were read by unauthorized people. Identity theft is a real concern so patient privacy should be taken seriously. This is a rule can easily be broken without the

In the health care business, there are certain standards and laws that have been put in place to protect our patients and their personal health information. When a health care facility fails to protect their patient’s confidential information, the US Government may get involved and facilities may be forced to pay huge sums of money in fines, and risk damaging their reputation.

The good news is that there are ways to prevent these breaches from happening altogether. The government has created laws to help fix these breaches, and to punish those who intentionally steal private information. These laws are HIPAA and HITECH. HIPAA created security for the exchange of medical information (US Dept of Health 2002). When someone goes to a hospital or doctor’s office and they are asked sign a document about whether or not they can release medical information to other doctors or hospitals, this is HIPAA in effect. The individual chooses whether or not they want their information to be sent anywhere else. This law makes the medical facilities accountable for protecting all medical information. HITECH was put into effect for

Research identity-theft cases from medical offices.Explain the case and prepare a one-page paper on prevention strategies based on the case found.

(Jones and Jing) Though citizens might not see the effects of health care fraud directly, everyone is impacted in one way or another either through increased taxes, high insurance costs, or the inability to afford health care coverage. While we all hear about major frauds in the system, a majority of the frauds are small and usually go through undetected, unreported, or seriously underreported. (Sparrow) These small frauds add up to be a huge problem. There is a large spectrum of frauds in the health-care systems ranging from the theft of a wheelchair, to organized crime groups that steal patient information and bill for phantom services in multimillion-dollar schemes. (Jones and Jing) In many cases, the fraud is minor but all the small scams add up to an enormous loss to the public. For example, the frequent occurrences of forging of a doctor’s signature on a prescription accounts for billions of dollars lost each year. (Jones and Jing) One of the most common crimes involves billing for services that were never performed. This involves a health care provider submitting a false claim to be paid for a patient that was never treated or adding on services to a patient. For example a doctor may obtain names of other people such as a patients spouse or child who are covered by insurance and put in a claim for them as well as the actual patient. (FBI) Another common fraudulent activity involves upcoding of services. This is when a healthcare

Privacy of health information has become an area of emphasis across the healthcare industry. It is important to understand what data is protected under federal regulations, how it can be shared, and how to prevent any accidental exposure of protected data. It is possible that data that should be protected can be exposed without anyone even realizing a violation has occurred. Exposure of protected healthcare data can result in medical identity theft and is therefore a very important and hot topic. The security and privacy of healthcare data is necessary to ensure consumer confidence in the healthcare industry and to prevent medical identity theft.

Security breaches of EMRs vary from someone without consent viewing the patient’s information, to a hacker using the information to steal one’s identity. According to Privacy Rights Clearing House, more than 260 million data breaches have occurred in the United States, including those of health related records. Approximately 12 percent of data breaches involve medical organizations (Gellman, 2012). According to Redspin, a provider of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act risk analysis and IT security assessment services, more than 6 million individual’s health records were compromised during a period from August 2009 and December 2010 (Author Unknown, 2010). A provision of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act requires all breaches affecting 500 or more people to be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services. This reporting is to be accomplished within 60 days of discovery. The Redspin report covering the period above involved 225 breaches of protected health information. The amount of people with access to an individual’s health record creates concern with confidentiality. According to the Los Angeles

Physicians in several places have a bad reputation due to billing fraud. These acts are committed by individuals and organizations to proceed personal or business advantage. In fact, health care fraud is a type of crime that may be committed by health care providers or companies which provide medical supplies or services, and health care organizations. It is a recent trend to which physicians and their practices are unfortunately doing by organized crime groups in complex health care fraud schemes.

I agree, Kelsey. Thieves take personal information to create ID's. My mother was a victim of taking birth dates and social security numbers of 12 individuals ‘to seek medical attention, for her narcotic addiction. She would overhear the personal information and write it down to use at another hospital. However, my mother and I don't have a relationship, but I don't think she was ever charged. That is why it's important to monitor your personal information and never say anything where others can over hear.

Medical identity theft is described as the unlawful use of someone else’s personal information to get medical services or to make fake claims for medical services (Mancilla and Moczygemba, n.d.). Medical identity theft can be divided into three categories. One category type is using personal information and using the health coverage of an insured person. The second category consists of a medical facility worker mistreating privacy privileges to get a patient’s health insurance information, and then sell the health policy information or use it to submit false bills to the insurance company.

Healthcare fraud an abused are a threat to the healthcare environment, because of people an technology use. I have heard on the news an reading articles of how healthcare fraud an abuse is becoming a popular habit. I can see how the constant change in technology can become a threat. I use technology to document patient information and to put my time in when I'm with a patient, an I can see where people can commit fraud an abuse, using technology. A lot times there was incident where the company sent out many emails on employees claiming to providing care to their patients an the service wasn't provided, an using

These crooks are the possible cause of ruining the reputation of the most trusted and appreciated professionals of our society – physicians. Healthcare fraud can be committed in a variety of ways, but three of the most widely used are described below. The first and most widely known, is billing services that were never endured by using general patient information. When giving personal information out, many hand it over to the front desk assistant at the local doctor. These appear to be people are some of the most known to scam the information and bill patient’s payments that never took place. Keep in mind that when handing over information, the handler is a trusted individual with a good reputation. On the other hand, many are scammed for the opposite; otherwise known as “upcoding,” where patients are billed more expensive services that were actually done. In fact, according to USA.gov a new study showed that 7 percent of identity fraud victims this year reported identity thieves stole their health insurance information, rising up from just 3 percent last year (Federal Bureau Investigation, 2010). This includes the latest scam, called “unbundling,” where scammers con bills and bill each step of a procedure as if it were a separate making the individual pay even more money, leaving devastating effects for the victim. All of which have a common goal of making taxpayers, insurance companies, and

The department of Health and Human Services protects and guides the health and well being of individuals here in America (Thacker, 2014). They fulfill these duties providing Americans with adequate and efficient health and human services and monitoring services designed to increase the efficiency of care in the health system (Thacker, 2014). One of the services being monitored by the department of Health and Human Services is the electronic health record system, which carries private and vital information of patient’s health record enabling all eligible participating health workers access to these records (Thacker, 2014). A breach of the protective health information of patients in a health organization creates chaos as these are against the health insurance portability and accountability (HIPAA) law (Thacker, 2014). Hence, measure will have to be put in place to determine what caused the breach and how to rectify it to ensure the breach never happens again (Thacker, 2014).

The objective of this paper is to present the most recent data security patterns. It will likewise give the late digital assaults as samples and highlight the lessons learned. Medicinal services records speak to a greatly appealing focus for digital crooks, containing as they do different bits of delicate data like Social Security numbers all in one spot. Given the estimation of this information, it is clear why the Identity Theft Resource Center 's most recent 2014 Data Breach Category Summary found that medicinal services represented 43 percent of all ruptures year-to-date. The test for IT and security experts working in social insurance is that they must