Medical Identity Theft Risks

It is unfortunate that while we have very clear rights to access and correct our financial records, we don’t have similar rights when it comes to our medical records. While this hasn’t been a high level concern for patients up until now, because the majority of fraud thus far has mostly impacted the healthcare insurers, the implications for all of us are getting more and more serious.

This segment describes a situation where a young woman’s social security number at the Red Cross became associated with a patient who visited a clinic in another state, years ago, who had AIDS. It illustrates the difficulty that one has in correcting such issues with our medical identities.