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2015 Healthcare Industry Investments to Fight Medical Identity Fraud

MIFA conducted a survey of its members and associates to better understand investments the healthcare industry is making to detect, prevent and mitigate medical identity theft and fraud. Analysis of the results from the 2015 Healthcare Industry Investments to Fight Medical Identity Fraud study paper will help us better understand investment approaches taken by companies in the healthcare industry in terms of dealing with identity theft and fraud. provides the following findings.

Results indicate the healthcare industry is trending upward for investments in technology, processes, programs and human capital to detect, prevent and mitigate medical identity theft and fraud.

Key Findings:
1. Technology investments garnered the highest dollar amount for budget allocations to detect, prevent or mitigate medical identity fraud.

2. Spending is not necessarily completely aligned with strategic priorities. While personnel and human resources/talent ranked highest in priority by 72 percent of respondents, spending is led by IT systems.

3. There is a slight upward trend in spending to detect, prevent and mitigate medical ID theft and fraud has decreased in only 4.17 percent of respondents.

4. Detection systems lead IT spending over prevention and mitigation. Nearly half of respondents listed detection systems as half or more of their total IT budget, compared to just 23% indicating they allocated half or more of their budget to prevention systems.

2014 Fifth Annual Study on Medical Identity Theft

The 2014 Fifth Annual Study on Medical Identity Theft measures the prevalence, extent and impact of medical identity theft to consumers and the healthcare industry in the United States. The incidence of medical identity theft continues to rise. This most recent report shows that it has nearly doubled since the first study five years ago. In 2014, there were almost 500,000 more victims than in 2013. Total annual out-of-pockets costs increased from $11B to $20B. And victims continue to experience serious risks, such as misdiagnosis, mistreatment and delayed healthcare due to corrupted health records.

Click here for the previous 2013 report.

White Paper: The Growing Threat of Medical Identity Fraud: A Call to Action

Today, very few professionals or consumers are aware of medical identity theft and its’ potential for harm. Policy decision-makers, organizations that hold Protected Health Information (PHI), law enforcement, regulatory agencies and consumer facing groups now have an opportunity and obligation to bring this serious societal problem to the forefront and work together to protect the public.