Medical identity theft involves stealing medical records, medicare benefits, insurance cards and credit accounts, which are all used to pay for medical services and goods. This type of theft oftentimes results in incorrect entries being put into existing medical records, and it can also involve fictitious medical records being placed in the victim’s name. Medical identity theft is the hardest of all the identity thefts to rectify because victims have limited rights and resources. Falsified medical records can negatively affect victims’ medical and financial lives for years. This includes:
Currently, there is no officially designated process medical identity theft victims can follow to dispute false claims or correct erroneous information within their records. However, individuals can still prevent against medical identity theft by following the below tips:
What to do if Victimization has occurred
Even though there is no officially designated procedure for responding to medical identity theft, individuals can still take steps to try to rectify the problems. If individuals have become victims of medical identity theft, they should respond to the incident immediately by:
Generally speaking, every organization that handles individuals’ health information should have some sort of procedure for medical identity theft. It is imperative that individuals contact all organizations related to their medical identity theft, and ask about their specific policies, procedures and response teams. Individuals should also follow the regular procedures for dealing with identity theft in addition to following the above procedures specifically for medical identity theft. This includes obtaining credit scores, issuing fraud alerts, and contacting the Federal Trade Commission along with credit bureaus and agencies.
Summary
Medical identity theft, which comprises only 3 percent of all identity theft crimes, is serious and life-threatening. Erroneous medical records may mean erroneous and live threaten treatments for victims. Even though medical identity theft is harder to recover from, individuals can still fix damage done by it. However, individuals should attempt to steer clear of medical identity theft by following the routine preventative steps outlined in this article.