Identity & Medical Theft Identity Theft and Medical Theft

Identity theft occurs when a victim's name, social security number, or other personal identifying information gets used to commit fraud or other crimes (Lafferty, 2007). Fraudsters use the information to set up loan accounts, draw from the victim's bank accounts, or set up other charge accounts in the victim's name. Identity theft is governed by the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act as well as state statutes, such as Florida Statutes section 817.568, to criminalize identity theft. Other laws that govern identity theft are Identity Theft Victims Assistance Act of 2002, Identity Theft Prevention Act of 2001 (Identity Theft Laws) as well as the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act) (Identity Theft Regulations). Identity theft can occur in any setting, including a medical setting, without being medical identity theft. Penalties for identity theft can be brought to organizations for not adequately securing against breaches and risk of damage to reputation for breach disclosures.

It occurs anytime a person's identity, such as name, insurance information, is misappropriated to obtain medical services or goods or to make false claims for medical services or goods and falsify medical records to support those claims. Healthcare fraud is the falsification of medical records with or without identity theft. Medical identity core issues are the intentional misuse of personally identifying information and healthcare fraud is the intentional submission of false claims.
Medical identity theft is a combination of identity theft and healthcare fraud. It is both information and healthcare fraud and abuse that results in financial, medical, and other harms to victims, such as financial losses, false entries in medical records, the denial of insurance or the use of all available insurance benefits be "capped," loss of patient, physician, and healthcare organization reputation, depending on who is victimized. There is loss of time…