Medical Identity Theft Research Paper

Medical Identity theft is when someone uses or transfers another person’s medical information to obtain medical services or other goods (i.e. pharmaceutical products) for him/herself without lawful authority thus commits an unlawful activity that violates the federal, state or even local law. In other words, medical identity theft happens when thieves (there have been many cases in which this is done internally) steal your personal health information to submit fraudulent claims against your health policy. Typically, the personal health information consists of the victim’s: social security and health insurance number.
Medical identity theft is a serious crime that should not be taken lightly by the organization. That said, to lessen the risk, …show more content…
It can affect the patient in numerous ways. For example, he/she can have unauthorized charges appear on their health insurance policy. This can take years to resolve. It can also cause inaccurate entries to be documented their health record (Jay, Quiggle, Goldblatt, Smith, & Tchinnosian, n.d.). Additionally, it can have a long-lasting damage and even put the victim’s life at risk. Meaning, the thief’s medical information (i.e. history/diagnosis) can be mistakenly documented in victim’s health record. This can include information related to wrong blood type, allergies or even serious diagnoses such as mental illness, cancer or STDs (Jay et al., n.d.). This can cause the patient to receive wrong medical treatment based on the medical identity thief’s information. Furthermore, medical identity theft can cause the victim to lose his/her health coverage. How? Most health insurance companies have a cap on the policy health limit (Jay et al., n.d.). This is a serious issue because once that cap is reached, it can leave the patient with no health insurance when he/she present him/herself in an emergency situation to receive expensive and unforeseen medical treatment or operation (Jay et al., …show more content…
This happens because when a thief steals the victim’s medical information and rings up large hospital bills under the victim’s name, they normally disappear and leave the victim with large debt. This debt, usually goes unseen. Then, if left unpaid, it gets sent to collections and can ruin the victim’s credit. This can take months or even years to straighten out and it can cause the victim to be denied credit cards, mortgages, loans and can even affect your job (some employers require a credit history prior to hiring) (Jay et al.,