Identify Theft Through Medical Records
Medical identity theft doesn't get a lot of attention in the media because it is still fairly rare, but it is growing very rapidly. As the economy becomes worse and more people are left without health insurance, a certain number of them will set their ethics aside in their desperation and steal someone else's identity in order to gain access to their health coverage.
If you don't have a medical condition that requires you to go to the doctor regularly, you probably keep your insurance card in your wallet just in case of emergencies. If you suddenly have to be rushed to the hospital, you want to be able to prove you have insurance and aren't treated as a charity case. However, you rarely have any reason to use it other than your annual physical, so you might not even notice if it were to go missing. Thus you could become the victim of medical identity theft and not even realize it until the damage is done. The consequences could be disastrous, including you and your family losing health coverage altogether.
Even if you still can get care under your insurance coverage, the integrity of your medical records could be compromised. Vital information such as your blood type or existing medical conditions could be altered, resulting in your receiving care that is actively harmful to you. You could be badly injured or even die as a result of getting the wrong kind of blood or a treatment for a condition you don't even have.
Even if you escape being physically hurt, you will almost certainly experience financial injuries. You may end up having to pay for insurance claims that others have filed fraudulently in your name. Even if you are able to successfully prove that you did not contract those claims and should not have to pay them, your credit rating will be damaged in the interim, and you may be unable to obtain health care you actually need because of the outstanding bills in your name.
Repairing the damage done by medical identity thieves can be one of the most difficult identity theft problems to resolve. Not only do you have the problem of wading through all the bills in your name and determining what you do and don't owe, but you also have to expose your sensitive medical information to a large number of other people, many of whom have nothing to do with the health professions. Just getting your records disentangled from those of the impostors who are using your name fraudulently can require dozens of people looking through each and every record in your files at several different clinics and hospitals.
Worse, you may be left vulnerable for further identity fraud in the future. Especially if the thieves are able to gain access to your Social Security number, they may be able to commit a wide variety of other forms of criminal identity fraud against you in the future.
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