Stealing Your Health:
Medical ID Theft

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May 3, 2006 — - There's a new kind of identity theft going around that can leave you bankrupt and be hazardous to your health.A report released today by the World Privacy Forum, a non-profit research group, describes the threat as medical identity theft. It happens when someone uses your social security number to obtain medical care -- even surgery -- while pretending to be you. According to the report, there have been 19,428 complaints about medical identity theft to the Federal Trade Commission since that agency started recording such complaints in 1992.However, the report also notes that medical identity theft is underreported and may be more common that law enforcement officials believe. "This crime is under-researched and under-documented," the report says. "It is highly probable that & more cases exist."

A Joke That Wasn't Funny

For Joe Ryan of Vail, Colo., medical identity theft has meant financial ruin for him. He got a $40,000 bill for a surgery he never had. "This must be a joke," Ryan said when he received the bill. According to Ryan, the bill collectors told him, "You're Joe Ryan aren't you? And your social security number is? ... And your date of birth?" Unfortunately for Ryan, it wasn't a joke. Surgery was performed but on the wrong person. Police believe the imposter was a man named Joe Henslik, a career criminal who stole Ryan's identity. Henslik later died, but police believe he first confessed to his alleged crime in a voicemail message, saying "I had to get in the hospital. ... But I had no insurance." In Ryan's case, the alleged medical identity thief was already a criminal and had no relationship with his victim. In other cases discovered by ABC News, imposters have received medical care by posing as their friends, family members, and co-workers.

Using your social security number, date of birth, or insurance information, medical identity thieves can taint your record with doctor's appointments you've never made and medical treatments you've never received. Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, believes imposters might even use the tactic to "scrub" their own medical histories, purposely leaving a trail of treatments for chronic or stigmatizing illness on your records instead of theirs. "If someone steals your identity and goes into the hospital and has medical treatment, you will have a medical record in your name that doesn't match your body," Dixon said.

How to Protect Yourself

The danger to the theft victim is that going in for emergency treatment -- particularly if the victim is unconscious or otherwise unable to communicate -- doctors might provide medical care tailored to the identity thief's medical history. Those errors could have serious health consequences. There are also steps hospitals and healthcare providers can take to combat the problem. At the University of Connecticut Health Center, they have started asking for photo identification before treating patients. When they ask, some people just run away. "It's amazing how many times people would say I left my ID in the car," said Marie Whalen, a vice president at the University of Connecticut Health Center. "They'd go out to get it and then all of a sudden they never returned." Dixon, the author of the World Privacy Forum report, thinks there's more that hospitals, insurance companies, and government agencies can do to stop the problem and help its victims. Her recommendations include a review of policy with an eye for making it easier to obtain and correct one's own health information. "Under the law, health care provides aren't required to entirely delete false records." Dixon said. "Helping people correct their files is one of the more important rights that can be expanded. It can really help save lives in the long run." The best way to protect against medical identity theft, Dixon said, is to check your medical file to make sure it's accurate and to keep a close eye on your insurance statements.

Meanwhile, Joe Ryan is still fighting to get back what he lost from being a Medical Identity Theft victim. His business, Rocky Mountain Biplane, is on the verge of bankruptcy.  The bottom line is the whole thing has just been absolutely devastating to me," he said. "It's very frustrating to say the least."

As more hospitals and doctors use electronic health records, you are at a greater risk of becoming a victim of medical identity theft.

September 2006

Joe Ryan is a pilot in a tailspin. His business, providing sightseeing tours in his biplane, could go under. He has faced foreclosure on his home. His credit cards have been canceled, and by this summer, the Eagle, Colo., resident only had about $500 to his name—and owed thousands in bills.

Ryan’s free fall into financial ruin began after he placed an ad in the Centennial Aviation & Business Journal in 2003—and became a victim of medical identity theft. “The guy taking my ad said he needed my Social Security number and birth date to verify my check,” Ryan, 60, says. “And, like an ass, I gave it to him.” It turns out that the magazine ad salesman, a career criminal on parole named Joe Henslik, needed colon surgery. And using Ryan’s identity, he got it at Littleton Adventist Hospital in suburban Denver. Months later, Ryan—who had no medical insurance—received a $44,000 hospital bill for Henslik’s treatment. Henslik died last December.

“When I went to the hospital ... I offered to take off my shirt to show them I had no scars whatsoever, to prove surgery wasn’t done on me,” says Ryan. “Still, they gave me a hard time.” He convinced hospital officials that his identity had been stolen, but because of federal privacy laws “the hospital wouldn’t even allow me to review the 3-inch-thick file in my name sitting on the desk, or even reveal the type of surgery I supposedly had.” It took a year for the hospital to waive the bill. “I needed a loan for my business, and everyone was slamming doors in my face because of this black mark on my name,” Ryan says. “To get a loan, I had to pay the highest interest rate ... I have been destroyed.”

Stealing someone’s identity for medical care is another twist on identity theft, affecting about 250,000 Americans a year, says Pam Dixon of the San Diego-based World Privacy Forum, a consumer group that has studied this scam. (For the report, go to worldprivacy.org.) “People 50 and older are at the greatest risk because they often have some kind of government-issued insurance, such as Medicare or Medicaid,” says Dixon. “That’s a big lure for the scammers, because the system is so large and automated that the government doesn’t really do medical insurance fraud alerts.” With any type of insurance—or none at all—medical identity theft can mean more than financial devastation. You could get improper treatment based on an impostor’s health history—receiving prescriptions that could interact dangerously with drugs you take, or being denied a knee replacement because the impostor had vascular problems. You could have trouble buying life or disability insurance.

How does medical identity theft occur? “One common scenario, especially in Florida, California, New York and Texas, is that a health clinic is purchased—often by organized crime figures—and staffed with phony or corrupt doctors to lure seniors to get their insurance and personal information,” Dixon says. “If you ever see an unknown clinic offering free medical checkups, run away.” Other ID thefts are pulled off by moles who copy patient files after getting hired unknowingly by legitimate medical practices. Scammers also get patient information by combing through the trash outside medical offices. Or they solicit victims’ personal data under the guise of selling health products online.

“Right now, selling someone’s medical file and insurance data on the black market gets top dollar,” Dixon says. Here are ways to protect yourself:

    * Ask your doctors to make you copies (you may have to pay for them) of everything in your medical file; keep the files updated for a protective “paper trail.” Ask, too, for an “accounting of disclosures,” which shows who accessed your records.

    * Review all correspondence from medical insurers, including those “This Is Not a Bill” statements. Look for any treatment you didn’t receive.

    * Once a year, ask insurers for a list of all payments made in your name to uncover cases where a thief changes “your” billing address.

    * If you note errors or suspect identity theft, immediately call the billing physician and request that your file be amended. Contact your regional office of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, if you receive those services, and your state attorney general’s office.

    * Monitor your credit report with credit reporting bureaus Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, looking for reports of medical debts.

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Last Modified: 01 September, 2007 Copyright © 2006 by Broadband Times