Problem
Anndorie Cromar is a medical identity theft victim. A pregnant woman used Cromar's medical identity to pay for maternity care at a nearby hospital. Because the infant was born with drugs in her system, the state's child protective services (CPS) assumed she was Cromar's infant and threatened to take Cromar's four children away. It required a DNA test to get her name off of the infant's birth certificate, but years to get her health records corrected. "That first stage was the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced in my life, getting the call from CPS and having them say, 'We are coming to take your kids'" (Andrews 2016).
Medical identity theft is not detected and stopped readily like financial fraud, where the bank or credit card company calls when they see suspicious charges on a person's account. Consumers, therefore, need to be particularly vigilant about information that can be stolen to commit medical identity theft: personal, medical, and insurance information. Consumers should do the following:
1) Scrutinize insurance company explanation of benefits forms and correspondence from healthcare providers and health insurers
2) Be suspicious of inaccurate statements and bills, including documentation relating to services they did not receive
3) Routinely review credit reports for debts that do not belong to them
4) Treat insurance cards and policy numbers with the same care as Social Security numbers, and not share them readily
Additionally, consumers should not post information about medical treatments on social media. A criminal could use that information, along with other personal data located online, to create a complete and accurate profile by which to exploit the victim. Once the perpetrator's and victim's medical information are intertwined, it is much
A. What could Anndorie Cromar, or any of us, do to prevent becoming a victim of medical identity theft?
B. Why should healthcare organizations be interested in financial identity theft?
C. What impact might medical identity theft have on the patient's care?
More difficult to undo than simple financial identity theft cases. Further, because medical identity theft involves a person's health profile, it cannot be shut down as quickly as a credit card number can (Andrews 2016).