Occurrence of medical identity theft incidents doubled in the last five years; Consumers left facing more than $20 billion in out-of-pocket costs
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — The Medical Identity Fraud Alliance (MIFA), a public/private partnership committed to strengthening healthcare by reducing medical identity fraud, today released its annual study on the impact of medical identity theft. The Fifth Annual Study on Medical Identity Theft, found the number of patients affected by medical identity theft increased nearly 22 percent in the last year, an increase of nearly half a million victims since 2013. In the five years since the survey began, the number of medical identity theft incidents has nearly doubled to more than two million victims. The study was released with support from Kaiser Permanente, ID Experts, Experian Data Breach Resolution and Identity Finder, LLC, and conducted by the Ponemon Institute.
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"Over the past five years, we've seen medical identity theft steadily rising with no signs of slowing," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute. "Our research shows more than two million Americans were victims of medical identity theft in 2014, nearly a quarter more than the number of people impacted last year."
Medical identity theft is a national healthcare issue with potential to cause life-threatening and hefty financial consequences for consumers. According to the Fifth Annual Study on Medical Identity Theft, 65 percent of victims surveyed paid more than $13,000 out-of-pocket costs to resolve the crime.
"Given the high volume of medical records and personal information leaked by healthcare providers and payers, organizations are now more focused on reducing how much unprotected PHI they store and shrinking the target hackers go after so that fewer patients are exposed to the risks of medical identity fraud," said Identity Finder CEO Todd Feinman. "Identity Finder was glad to participate in a study that explains what the implications of that unprotected data are for users—and the companies who provide services."
Noteworthy takeaways and key findings from the report include:
- Consumers expect healthcare providers to be proactive in preventing and detecting medical identity theft
Although respondents are not confident in the security practices of their healthcare provider, the vast majority (79 percent) of respondents expect their healthcare providers to ensure the privacy of their health records. Forty-eight percent say they would consider changing healthcare providers if their medical records were lost or stolen. If a breach does occur, 40 percent expect prompt notification to come from the responsible organization.
- Resolution of medical identity theft is time consuming and may never occur
Due to HIPAA privacy regulations, victims of medical identity theft must be involved in resolution of the crime. In many cases, victims struggle to reach resolution following a medical identity theft incident. Only 10 percent of survey respondents reported achieving completely satisfactory conclusion of the incident. Many respondents remain at risk for further theft or errors in healthcare records that could jeopardize medical treatments and diagnosis.
- Medical identity theft can cause embarrassment; negatively impact consumer confidence
Nearly half of respondents (45 percent) say medical identity theft affected their reputation in some way.
To view the Fifth Annual Study on Medical Identity Theft, visit http://www.identityfinder.com/us/Business/Downloads/WhitePapers
About Medical Identity Fraud Alliance (MIFA)
MIFA is an industry trade association of healthcare providers, payers and service provider stakeholders, working to help its members better protect consumers from medical identity theft and the resulting fraud. More information can be found at http://medidfraud.org/.
About Identity Finder, LLC
Identity Finder, headquartered in New York City, is the leading provider of enterprise data management software to help businesses reduce their sensitive data footprint and proactively minimize the risks, costs, and reputational damage of successful cyberattacks. Identity Finder specializes in the high-precision search of unstructured data using its AnyFind engine's unparalleled accuracy when analyzing human-generated text and images. Identity Finder has thousands of customers among leading firms in the healthcare, public sector, retail, education, financial services, energy, industrial, and entertainment markets.
Media Contacts:
Leah Motz
Edelman
206-664-7843
Email
Ann Patterson
Medical Identity Fraud Alliance
703-407-0958
Email