Medical identity theft today is where more conventional types of financial identity theft were about a decade ago. It represents a small but impending threat to U.S. consumers.

Many people, even those of us that are professionally in the privacy and fraud communities, haven’t even heard about medical identity theft. And certainly many give little thought to the risks that it presents to consumers. Is it really a problem, or is concern about it overblown? A recent Wall Street Journal article titled “How Identity Theft Sticks you with Hospital Bills” (Aug. 7, 2015) speaks to this growing threat and the potential harms that your customers and patients face from medical ID theft. Hackers, many of whom today are nation-states or offshore organized crime, are focusing their gunsites on health data as the next motherlode for monetizing stolen personal information.

While only 2.3 million adult patients in the U.S. were affected by medical identity theft in 2014 (Ponemon Institute, 2015), a relatively small group of folks, this number has been growing around 65% annually, and is set to explode in the coming years due to the extraordinary number individuals whose health information has been exposed by data breaches in recent months, 80 million alone by the breach at Anthem Inc., a major U.S. health insurer.

As noted in the Journal article, “‘Identity theft is pervasive throughout health care,’ says Gary Cantrell, deputy inspector general for investigations at HHS’s Office of Inspector General. “‘We see it as a growing concern.’ ”

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August 17, 2015 by Doug Pollack, ID Experts