MEDICAL BENEFITS FRAUD

We have been detecting increasing incidents of medical benefits fraud and we anticipate that this trend will significantly increase in the coming months. The ease with which this identity theft crime is committed, combined with the lack of any real law enforcement, and the increasing expense of medical care combined make this crime more attractive with each day.

The risks to you are not just the consumption of your time and financial confusion. Medical benefits fraud may result in inaccurate information being included in your medical records. The errors may serious threaten you future health and your cost of health insurance, life insurance, or even your ability to obtain a drivers license.

The World Privacy Forum, a non-profit public interest group published in May a report entitled “Medical Identity Theft: The Information Crime that Can Kill You”. We quote from that report.

“…medical identity theft is a serious information crime that has had substantial consequences on patient well being, often affects the accuracy of patient medical records, and can impact a victim’s finances.

There have been 19,428 complaints regarding medical identity theft to the Federal Trade Commission since January 1, 1992…”

The report continues to discuss the difficulty in uncovering medical identity theft and the depth to which the medical systems may be involved in vectoring this crime.

At KnightsBridge Castle we have watched these trends with some alarm. Medical records, and medical billing records are complex, prone to great numbers of errors, and extremely difficult for lay persons to interpret. Even some members of the medical community find these records incomprehensible. Fraud within these records is most difficult to detect and these record complexities allow this crime to be repeated over and over again.

For more information about the World Privacy Forum report please follow this link:http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/