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Protect Yourself from Medical Identity Theft

Medical identity theft is a growing concern in today’s digital age. It occurs when someone uses your personal information to obtain medical care, purchase medical devices, or order prescription drugs. This can lead to fraudulent claims being billed to your insurance company, resulting in errors in your medical records and significant stress. In this article, we will explore how medical identity theft occurs, signs to watch for, prevention tips, and steps to take if you become a victim.

How Can Medical Identity Theft Occur?

The first step in medical identity theft is stealing your personal information. Thieves can obtain your name, address, Social Security number, and health insurance information from various sources, including:

• Data breaches: Hundreds of data breaches occur each year, exposing millions of people’s information. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) maintains a list of reported breaches from the previous 24 months.
• Physical theft: Thieves might go through your mail or trash and steal items with your information, such as health insurance cards, prescriptions, billing statements, or explanation of benefits forms.
• Phishing: Criminals may send emails, texts, or calls to trick you into sharing your information. They might pretend to be conducting a survey or claim to work for a healthcare provider or government agency.
• Scams: Scammers may ask for your information and promise free medical care, devices, or other benefits like groceries or transportation.

Medical identity theft can also occur when medical providers commit fraud, someone buys your information, or people share insurance information with friends or family members. Regardless of how it happens, the repercussions can be severe, including incorrect medical records, denied treatments, and significant time and effort to correct the issues.

6 Signs of Medical Identity Theft

You might be at risk or a victim of medical identity theft if you notice any of the following signs:

• Data breach notifications: A company informs you that your information was exposed in a data breach.
• Unexpected medical notifications: You receive a letter, text, email, or call about an upcoming appointment or prescription you didn’t schedule.
• Unusual bills or collection accounts: You receive a bill for a service you didn’t receive or get a call from a provider or debt collector about the bill.
• Errors in your medical records: You find errors in your medical records, such as procedures you didn’t receive or test results for tests you never took.
• Changes in your personal information: You notice changes in your personal information, such as your address, in your health portal or insurance account.
• Surprising health insurance charges: You see unexpected changes in your health insurance charges, such as changes in your annual deductible.

How to Prevent Medical Identity Theft

Here are some steps you can take to help protect yourself from medical identity theft:

• Secure your online accounts: Create unique and secure passwords for all your accounts, enable multifactor authentication, and use a passkey to minimize the fallout of a data breach.
• Keep your information private: Never share your personal information, including health plan information, over the phone or by email unless you initiated the conversation.
• Contact your insurance company: Inform your insurance company if you think your information was stolen or exposed in a data breach.
• Monitor your accounts and reports: Regularly review your health insurance account and medical records for errors. Monitor your credit for signs of identity theft, such as new hard inquiries, new accounts, and collection accounts.
• Retain old medical records: Keep copies of old medical records and other documents to correct your record if you’re a victim of medical identity theft.
• Destroy items with personal information: Shred or safely dispose of health records, EOBs, old insurance cards, prescription pill bottles, and anything else with your personal and medical information.
• Keep devices updated and clean: Install the latest updates on your devices and regularly run antivirus scans to check for malware.

What to Do if You’re a Victim of Medical Identity Theft

If you know or suspect you’ve been a victim of medical identity theft or fraud, take the following steps:

• Submit a report to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Visit IdentityTheft.gov to create a recovery plan and get an FTC Identity Theft Report. You may also want to file a crime report with your local law enforcement.
• Request copies of your EOBs, medical records, and accounting of disclosures: Review these documents closely for errors and contact the relevant providers to correct them.
• Dispute errors and correct your medical records: Contact your health insurance company and healthcare providers to fix your medical records. You may need to provide supporting documents and wait for investigations before updates are made.
• Secure your credit reports: Add a fraud alert or security freeze to your credit reports to prevent fraudsters from using your information to open new credit accounts.
• Seek assistance: If you’re struggling to correct medical record errors, contact the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center for free victim assistance services.

Watch for Other Signs of Identity Fraud

Monitor other databases for signs of identity fraud, including your credit reports, financial accounts, and public records. Experian offers free credit reporting monitoring with real-time alerts. A paid premium membership provides additional benefits, such as access to fraud resolution specialists and up to $1 million in identity theft insurance.

At O1ne Mortgage, we understand the importance of protecting your personal information. If you have any mortgage service needs, don’t hesitate to call us at 213-732-3074. Our team of experts is here to help you every step of the way.

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