Getting a hospital bill for $30,000 can be scary and upsetting, but medical identity theft involves a lot more than financial burdens created by someone who uses your personal information to get medical care. Medical fraud is one way that identities are abused by thieves, and the real danger is not the long term financial problems it can create, but the life threatening consequences it can have on an innocent patient.

Of the many faces identity fraud has, medical identity theft is the deadliest one. Your medical records could end up with the wrong medical history and diagnoses and these are the things that can cause serious problems for you when you do need medical care.

The majority of cases of medical fraud involve criminal rings that often work with corrupt medical staff, who even include doctors. They purposely file false claim’s with the insurance information of unsuspecting victims. Some of these rings are so well organized for this type of crime that they can even setup fake clinics. The medical billing system is complex and confusing for most people, but for medical staff that know how the system works, this is all too easy.

This type of identity fraud can be very lucrative, continuously setting up fake claims can produce millions of dollars a year and now that most medical records are electronically archived, this presents even more opportunity since now thieves can steal millions of records at once. After all the damage is done and the victim realizes that their records are wrong, they will have a very frustrating time correcting these entries, which in many cases remain on medical records permanently.

Dangers of a wrong diagnosis

If you’ve been a victim of medical identity theft, you’re immediately in danger, especially if you are not even aware that your medical records have been wrongfully altered. This could mean a life threatening diagnosis for you.

Imagine being given a medical prescription for medicine that you’re allergic to, or being denied treatment because your records show that you were already treated for a specific condition you’re now developing and the medical facility considers you a liability because of what’s on your record. What if you were told your recent xrays are keeping you from getting new xrays that you need in order to find out what’s wrong with you? What if you needed surgery and couldn’t get it because according to your medical records you’re currently recovering from a previous surgery?

These are only some of the instances in which medical identity theft can complicate and threaten your life. The consequences go on and on and even if your life is not threatened by the changes in your medical record, the financial problems you’ll face can certainly make you sick.

Medical insurance fraud costs millions of dollars every year, and if you become a liability to your medical insurance company you can also be dropped. Your medical benefits could be exhausted if someone else impersonates you and uses your information to make their claims. Insurance companies have policies for dealing with fraud and most will work with you to investigate the fraud, but if your benefits continue to be abused you could end up with no benefits.

Identity theft protection and medical fraud

Identity protection services became available as a way to combat the ongoing epidemic of identity theft crimes, which in the majority of cases still refers to credit fraud. But there are so many ways to take advantage of another person’s identity that these services make a lot of sense. Even though they have great security features to stop identity theft, their services still have not fully responded to the threat of medical identity theft. Not every identity theft protection service offers medical benefits protection and the few that do, offer only limited protection measures to prevent this threat.

For now the only company we have discovered that offers medical benefits protection is Trusted ID, the service basically includes periodically reviewing and monitoring medical services provided to the subscriber to make sure no one else other than the designated subscribers are receiving medical care.

In order to prevent medical insurance fraud and the problems it can create for subscribers, the protection offered by these companies needs to improve significantly. They can effectively stop identity theft when it comes to credit accounts and can even detect your social security number floating around black market websites on the internet, but because medical identity theft is more complex, it’s a bigger challenge to tackle it as well as credit related crimes.

In spite of these deficiencies, the services are still a great way to outsource the tasks of monitoring your identity. It’s no doubt that these services are improving and innovating to provide better protection and monitoring your medical benefits usage maybe exactly what you need to keep yourself safe from medical identity theft.