Q. I read your recent article about a Navy veteran in Northern Virginia who was defrauded out of several million dollars and the banks did nothing to stop it. Thanks for sharing that and for making us aware that this type of fraud
is happening. It made me think of something I heard about that happened to a friend of mine – medical identity fraud.
My friend got a text from an emergency department of a hospital in DC informing her that her wait time to be seen was an hour. She found it odd, since she no longer lives in DC, hadn't used that hospital system in years,
and was feeling perfectly healthy with no need to make a medical appointment that day. Then she got a second text, similar to the first. Must be a wrong number or spam, she thought. When she got a call the next day from a hospital staffer to discuss the diagnostic results from her ER visit, she knew something was definitely wrong. It seemed that someone else got registered with her name. She couldn’t fathom how this had happened!
The name and date of birth the staffer had on record for her were correct, though her address was not. She now lives in Fredericksburg and has for the past fifteen years. The hospital said they’d correct the problem. They changed that address in their system, and the next week, she got a bill from the hospital in DC for more than $4,000 for the other person’s care!
My friend is savvy, since she is retired from healthcare herself. In her situation, it was unclear whether her problem was due to an administrative mix-up, such as another patient with the same name, or medical identity theft. But within a month of her initial call, the hospital removed the charges and assured her that her
medical record had been disentangled from the other patient's. I’m sure the outcome isn’t always as good though. What are some ways that medical identity theft can happen and what can be done to stop it?
