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Tip: Educate staff on identity theft scenarios and risks

EHR Connection, May 14, 2007

Because the electronic healthcare environment lends itself to privacy breaches, it is important to educate your staff on the scenarios and why there is institutional risk. A recent EpicTide survey of hospitals indicated that 48% of the respondents had at least one incident of medical identity theft in the last 12 months.

Some breaches may seem innocuous, but are frequently tied to highly risky legal scenarios in which healthcare providers find themselves in the middle of divorce, child custody, blackmail, identity theft, and organized crime court cases. At the extreme is medical identity theft in which patients suffer financial, professional, emotional, and even life-threatening consequences.

Address the following situations with your staff:

• Medical identity theft
• Identity theft
• Family member medical record snooping
• Neighbor medical record snooping
• VIPs (very important patients) at the hospital
• Criminals and the accused at the hospital

Editor's note: Kurt Long, the CEO of Saint Petersburg, FL-based privacy auditing company EpicTide provided this tip. For more information, go to www.epictide.com. For well-documented and extreme consequences for patient victims, read The World Privacy Forum's report titled, Medical Identity Theft: The Information Crime that Can Kill You. Go to www.worldprivacyforum.org and click on the medical identity theft link.

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