Stealing Identities to Buy Health Care

Kaiser Health and MSNBC are running articles talking about identity theft with the goal buying health care. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), about 1.3 to 3% of all identity theft has the purchase of health care services as the goal. People charging health care to someone else happens about 250,000 times each year. Think about it...how often do you check ID when registering a patient or getting ?

The FTC instituted the RED Flag Rule in November, 2003, in effort to reduce instances of identity theft in health care situations. Under the rule, any doctor, health care institution, or other health care business has to put in protocols in place to spot fake IDs. In short, we have to start checking ID in health care situations. Fines and enforcement go live on the Red Flag Rule August 1, 2009. I'll bet nobody knows about it at all.

How will this impact health care? How about EMS?
Who holds the bag if a fake ID is not noticed? Who will provide training on how to spot these things? And what do you do when you find a fake ID? Maybe not a big deal in an emergency situation...but non-emergency or transfer situations it could be an issue. What happens when, lets say, the hospital fails to notice a falsified ID or ID theft situation and EMS finds it?

The American Medical Association has come out against the Red Flag Rule. You can read the AMA statement here. Also, here is a great posting from the Privacy Law Blog. One last link - from the I've Been Mugged Blog (very interesting reading, by the way)...