Identity theft is one of those crimes that can happen to New Yorkers without warning and can take months to years to resolve at great expense. Worse, there’s little one can do to prevent it, aside from keeping private information secure. As if this weren’t bad enough in itself, people are reporting a new ripple in identity theft: medical care. The problem is that health care providers often to not ask patients for some kind of identification when they come into the office, so it can be easy for people to impersonate someone else. In 2007, the federal government documented 250,000 cases of medical identity theft, and the number has likely increased.
In many cases, the thieves can take hospital records easily because they’re not well protected. This information can provide them with everything they need to know, particularly because just a name and Social Security number are all that’s needed for emergency care. Because medical data are so valuable, sometimes medical identity theft is an inside job, which is very hard to prevent. Alternatively, the thieves take patients’ insurance information, such as basic member identification numbers and group policy numbers. You’d think that it would be easier to secure electronic medical records than paper ones, but the contrary can also be true. Insurance companies sometimes pay out claims for years without asking any questions, which can result in people not knowing the theft occurred until collections warnings start appearing on their credit cards.
One way that medical identity theft is worse than just fraudulently using someone’s credit card is that there are two sets of records involved: credit reports and medical records. Credit reports are subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which allows consumers to access one report free per year and order banks to delete fraudulent charges. Medical records, by contrast are available but aren’t free under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The second set of records (the medical ones) is where there are problems. The thieves can resell the data to individuals who use it to obtain medical care for themselves, but in doing so, they alter critical information in the files. If they change things like blood type, allergies, surgical history, and drug history, emergency personnel might give the victim the wrong treatment with dangerous results. On top of that, HIPAA extends the same privacy protections to those who change the records as the original records holder, which makes it difficult to correct fraudulent alterations.
If someone fraudulently purchased medical care in your name, the problems might cause other credit problems that force you into bankruptcy. If that’s the case, you need experienced counsel to help.
For more questions about identity theft, medical identity theft, bankruptcy, the automatic stay, effective strategies for dealing with foreclosure, and protecting your assets in bankruptcy please feel free to contact experienced New York Bankruptcy Bruce Weiner for a free initial consultation.
