Automated summary from: San Diego Business Journal
From a Boston psychiatrist who submitted false bills to insurance companies, marring the medical records of several patients, to a Florida woman who found an impostor had led a hospital to record a false blood type causing a potentially fatal error, experts say medical identity theft is becoming more pervasive.
The shocking real-life examples come from a report called "Medical Identity Theft: The Information Crime That Can Kill You," from the San Diego-based World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit group.
False conditions on medical records can ruin prospects for a new job, as more than a third of Fortune 500 companies review medical records when hiring, according to the Austin, Texas-based Patient Privacy Rights Foundation.
Erroneous information gets re-reported from hospitals and doctors' offices to insurers, collection agencies and credit bureaus.
And since the health care industry's information technology is not yet centralized, as in the banking industry, victims have more difficulty reversing the damage.
“It may even be difficult to get your record to correct it,” said Tena Friery, research director at the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. These privacy rights groups, which help consumers nationwide, say parts of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, which is meant to protect patient privacy, have stood in the way of consumers who want to fix their medical records following medical identity theft.
Identity theft has been the fastest growing crime in the country for the past six years, said Keith Burt, a deputy district attorney who oversees the San Diego County district attorney office's identity theft unit.
Sharp HealthCare, which owns four local hospitals, estimates that five patients annually claim that they are not the patient who received services for which they were billed.