Protecting Yourself Against Medical Identity Theft

Many consumers take steps every day to protect their identity and financial information, but what about probably one of the most sinister forms of identity theft, medical id theft?  Your BBB® wants to provide information today to help consumers spot the signs of medical identity theft and arm them with some tools to prevent it.

What exactly is medical identity theft?

It is the theft of goods, services or insurance benefits relating to health care, medications and medical supplies.

How does it happen?

Thieves have discovered that with just the right information, they can charge medical services or supplies to other people or their insurance providers.  To gain the information needed, they may call unsuspecting consumers acting like they are representing their insurance provider. They may say they are looking to update information, beneficiaries, or looking to “verify” recent charges.

While on the phone, they may ask for medical or personal information and even describe the look of the card from which they want information. Their hope is to gain consumer confidence and ultimately receive personal information.

Another scenario completely bypassing the consumer might involve a thief offering to purchase identity and health information from medical personnel.

For these reasons and more, a growing number of health providers are starting to ask for a picture ID or are keeping a current photo on file of their patients.  Also, consider this: perpetrators may be hackers located abroad, or they may even be employees at medical facilities according to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.

The nastiest part of medical id theft is that someone may seek medical care using your identity, and then you wind up having their medical information on your medical record.  Of course, this also means that your insurance is being billed for those services for which you were never treated.

Click here to find out what you can do about medical id theft.