UTMB cleaning up privacy breach
About 1,200 patients of The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston had their privacy violated by an employee of a company hired by UTMB to assist with billing from third-party payers.
Alpharetta, Ga.-based MedAssets Inc. (NASDAQ: MDAS) employed the individual who accessed the information between July and October of 2009. On Dec. 15, law enforcement officials notified MedAssets that a former employee had been arrested and charged with identity theft.
Categories: Healthcare Tags: identity theft, Texas
Dental clerk gets 5+ years: stealing identity of patients
Brownsville dental clerk gets fiver years and nine months for embezzlement and stealing identifies of patients to open credit cards.
- Plead guilty to fraudulent identification and identity theft
- She also pocketed some cash payments
- Dentist says his reputation had been destroyed by this employee
- Had to pay the credit card company back for fraudulent charges
- $110,000 dollars in restitution
Categories: Healthcare Tags: dentist, identity theft, reputation, Texas
Goldmine of identity theft in healthcare
Great article from CNN Money.
- Healthcare identify theft dominated all other crimes in the sector last year
- Insiders selling information to organized criminal groups
- Medicare system a top target
- Selling medical information to uninsured who need care
- Fly by night shell billing companies
- Can put health at risk via tampering of medical records
- In 2008, $19,000 per incident of health care fraud, four fold larger than overall identify theft
- Prime target areas are those with large numbers of Medicare recipients (Miami, Detroit, etc)
Categories: Healthcare Tags: identity theft, medicare