After a long delay, health-care providers are scrambling to establish Red Flag Rules in their practices by the May 1 deadline.
The rules–intended to prevent identity theft–were created as part of the 2003 Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACT Act), but creditors were given until November 1 2008 to comply. It was just about then that medical practitioners learned that they are included in the Federal Trade Commission’s definition of creditors, considered to be an entity that “regularly extends, renews, continues credit or arranges for the extension of credit.” The FTC allowed health-care professionals another six months to bring their practices into compliance.
To be in compliance, practices have to have established procedures for spotting identity theft and trained all their employees accordingly to recognize the following red flags:
- Identification documents that appear altered or forged
- Photographs or a physical description that isn’t consistent with the patient’s appearance
- Inconsistent signatures on file
- Patient forms or applications that appear forged, altered or destroyed and re-assembled
- Statements sent to the patient or guarantor returned as un-deliverable despite ongoing transactions on active records.
Identity theft is a fast-growing crime, described by the U.S. Department of Justice as the number one crime concern in the nation. Medical identity theft isn’t tracked as a separate type of identity theft, but some estimate that as much as a 400% increase in 2008.
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From everything I’ve read, I’m starting to think medical ID theft is the scariest for patients. And I read something else the other day that said billions of dollars are lost to the kind where doctors use patients’ info to file false insurance claims.
These rules will only protect the doctors and insurance companies! We need to protect ourselves!