The Era of Medical Exploitation
Part II in a series
It would not be an exaggeration to say that medical identity theft could possibly kill you.
Research indicates that there may have been as many as 500,000 medical id thefts in just the last two years. Much of recent medical id theft has gone on undetected, which presents the real threat. We don’t even know we are victims…..yet.
Because this violation of our medical privacy can go on for years until it is discovered, the threat looms even larger for those who rarely seek medical services or advice. Sadly, these medical privacy breaches are not much of a priority for most health-care providers.
According to a recent Price Waterhouse Coopers report, the situation is not only dire in the United States, but around the world. Studies indicate that less than 50 percent of medical facilities even bother to encrypt your health data before transmitting or storing it electronically.
The opportunities for caregivers to misdiagnose a patient’s condition are drastically increased due to potentially false or inaccurate medical information being stored and shared in databases worldwide.
The recent disclosure that the medical files of George Clooney, Britney Spears and Maria Shriver were recently “snooped on” by curious hospital workers is a case in point. Just as most companies strive to prevent attacks and hacks from insiders, health-care providers are just waking up to the same stark reality.
We have become victims of not just the criminals, but victims of the curious. Marc Rotenberg, director of The Electronic Privacy Information Center agrees. “Now we’re moving into an era where many of those same problems occur with medical records.”
Next post, we’ll look at specific recommendations to help make and keep you a smaller medical identity theft target.