LifeLock

There are very few concrete facts available on medical identity theft, but is known is frightening, frustrating, life threatening and an enormous drain on the nation’s health care system.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Care Information Technology sponsored the first ever Medical Identity Theft Town Hall this week in Washington, DC.  Because there is no tracking system specifically for medical identity theft, there is no way of knowing exactly how widespread it is, or how many people have been affected. Anecdotal evidence indicates, though, that the crime is growing quickly and new legislation may be approved as early as next year.

Individual victims of medical ID theft can face life-threatening consequences when the medical information of the thief becomes part of their medical record. The administering of the wrong blood type or a drug to which the victim has an allergy could result in death.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) can thwart people trying to correct their records, an act intended to protect their personal information. Very often the same administrator who won’t let patients see their records, or refuses to make corrections, is responsible for placing the erroneous information there in the first place.

Selling the patient’s identity can become a multi-million dollar enterprise for the industrious practitioner. Using multiple patients’ information, the thieves bill insurance companies and federal programs for services never rendered.

Investigators have already recovered billions of dollars from fraudulent claims, which is good news. But Gary Cantrell, who directs the computer forensics investigations for the Health and Human Services Department, has a better view of the big picture.

He says those billions of dollars are “probably the tip of the iceberg.”

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