Medical Identity Theft Is Rising

In the past two years a vast amount (as much as ninety-six percent) of providers of health care have admitted misplacing the medical records of their patients, as a recent report has stated.

This worrying trend has been getting worse with a thirty-two percent rise in these types of lapses in 2011, with the computerization of medical records in the industry.

As stated by a study circulated by the Ponemon Institute, who examines privacy and data, the seventy-two healthcare companies who were surveyed had been the victims of four breaches of their data protection on average over the past year. Thirty percent of theses breaches led directly to people having their identities stolen.

Our study found that the number of data breaches among healthcare organizations… is still growing—eroding patient privacy and contributing to medical identity theft,

according to the report.

At least fifty percent of these breaches of data took place due to the companies misplacing computers and other devices that carried the records of their patients. Possibly not unexpectedly, fifty percent of the respondents “admit their organizations do nothing to protect these devices,” the report found. “Widespread use of mobile devices is putting patient data at risk.”

A large number of workers in the healthcare profession think that the companies they work for are not doing enough to protect the private information of their patients. A staggeringly low 29% of people surveyed think that their companies are not treating the prevention of data breaches as a top priority although 90% think that these breaches do harm to patients.

However for those people who do have their identity stolen they will often find themselves left to deal with the problem themselves. A meager 35% of people who replied to the survey told how their company offers protection from ID theft to patients affected by it.

Also when a breach does happen it seems to be more serious than it used to be. The average total of records of patients that have been lost or stolen has risen from 1,769 in 2010 to 2,575 in 2011.

With each loss of data costing each company roughly $2.2 million, up $200,000 on 2010. Also a lot of respondents said that they don’t believe that the company they work for are even aware of the data breach in the first place.

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