Medical Identity Theft Research Articles

Factors Facilitating the Perpetration of Medical Identity Theft: A Case of Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), Zaria

Medical Identity Theft is a pressing concern in healthcare systems, influenced by intricate motivations and vulnerabilities. This study investigates facilitating factorsbehind MIT, uncovers internal vulnerabilities, and proposes mitigation strategies. This study contributes to patient well-being and trust by fostering a secure healthcareenvironment through holistic MIT prevention strategies. A mixed-methods approach was employed, encompassing quantitative and qualitative aspects to explore the perpetration of MIT, Zaria, a significant healthcare institution. The diverse sample of 388 participants, including patients, healthcare providers, and stakeholders, was obtained through stratified random sampling. Structured interviews and questionnaires gathered primary data.Findings showcase a diverse workforce with a mid-career presence and gender distribution in technical roles. Significant facilitating factors for MIT encompassfinancial gain, fraudulent service access, and expense avoidance, necessitating robust patient identification procedures and comprehensive strategies. Internal vulnerabilitiesand inadequate data security underscore the need for enhanced measures, updated systems, and education. Respondents endorse a multifaceted approach, advocatingbiometric identification, authentication, patient photograph display, unique identifiers, access controls, staff training, real-time data verification, audit trails, data encryption,and patient education. Collaboration, awareness, and technology emerge as key elements in safeguarding patient data, ethical healthcare standards, and integrity. Findings advocate a comprehensive approach, emphasizing collaboration, awareness, and technology in addressing MIT

The Legal Muddle Over Healthcare Fraud in Malaysia

This article is an analysis of whether the current law in Malaysia is sufficient to tackle healthcare fraud. The main problem of healthcare fraud in Malaysia context is the lack of specific provisions to combat it. The objective of the article is to highlight the gap in the laws by comparing the available local law and the laws in the United States of America. This article will cover the discussion on what is healthcare fraud, the forms of healthcare fraud as well as their effects. It will analyse the available legislation on healthcare fraud between the United States and Malaysia. Several types of healthcare fraud are identified such as billing schemes, kickbacks and medical identity theft. Several types of hospital fraud are identified, for example unnecessary procedures, corruption and unauthorised practice. The article’s finding manages to identify several deficiencies in the law concerning anti-fraud law, anti-kickbacks law, cybercrime law and medical negligence. These weaknesses stem from inadequate laws where they are not specific to the fraud involved. Several recommendations are provided in addition for improvement. To conclude, there is limited data of healthcare fraud to prompt any strengthening of current laws because the current laws does not encourage prosecutors, whistle-blower or victim to report healthcare fraud. A systematic data collection is necessary to further advance the cause in fighting healthcare fraud.

Mitigating the consequences of electronic health record data breaches for patients and healthcare workers.

Electronic health records (EHRs) have been widely adopted in Australian public sector healthcare and will remain an ongoing, essential data system. However, recent substantial data breaches from hacked business data systems in Australian enterprises, as well as international healthcare providers, mean that EHR data breaches are increasingly likely in Australia. Risks include medical identity theft and extortion attempts based on threats to release sensitive patient information. Hacking is now a foreseeable additional risk of medical treatment. Risk mitigation for the consequences of data breaches needs to be considered, as well as support for patients (and families) and healthcare workers. This includes identity theft protection services, cybersecurity insurance, and psychological support.

Do data breach notification laws reduce medical identity theft? Evidence from consumer complaints data

AbstractAs the number of data breaches in the United States grows each year, cybersecurity has become an increasingly important policy area. The primary mechanism for regulating and deterring data breaches is the “data breach notification law.” Every US state now has such a law that mandates that certain organizations disclose data breaches to their data subjects. Despite the popularity of these laws, there is relatively little evidence about their effectiveness at deterring breaches, and therefore reducing identity theft. Using medical identity theft panel data collected from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, this study implements an augmented synthetic control approach to analyze the effect of California's 2016 data breach notification standards on medical identity theft. This approach suggests that medical identity theft reports in California were reduced by 3.5 reports/100,000 people.

Guest Editorial A Secured and Privacy-Preserved Smart Health Monitoring and Improvement System

The thirteen papers in this special section focuses on the development of smart health monitoring systems. The rapid growth of smart healthcare applications is made possible by the advancements in the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT collect data related to healthcare, public safety, energy, and behavior monitoring that provides useful information to a variety of applications. For example, in a smart health monitoring and improvement (SHAMI) system, healthcare professionals share the medical data of patients for a better and quick diagnosis of a disease. The integrity of electronic medical records and medical reports is necessary because modified, altered or corrupted medical data can make wrong diagnoses and create serious health issues for any individual. In addition, privacy leakage and medical identity theft is a growing concern and has contributed to a large number of e-fraud cases across the world. Therefore, in this special issue, we aim to focus on the security and privacy of medical data and reports in a smart healthcare application.

Integrated privacy decision in BPMN clinical care pathways models using DMN

Personal data is highly affected by the witnessed digital transformation of healthcare processes. This process relies deeply on the connectivity and decentralization of healthcare systems and data repositories. In this context, value creation and quality enhancement are obviously leveraged, however both health providers and individuals could be exposed to many risks ranging from privacy violations to medical identity theft and personal harm. Hence, it is essential that healthcare stakeholders ensure privacy protection and systemic compliance to personal data regulations such as HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Taking clinical processes as a starting point is very important to highlight the personal data in use and to assess whether such usage is justifiable and subsequently allow privacy management decisions to be made. In this paper we combine BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) and DMN (Decision Model and Notation) to model clinical care pathways as standard business processing constituting the hospital information system. Business process modelling presents a useful mean to model clinical care pathways. It allows a complete discovery of data processing scenarios. DMN (Decision Model and Notation) is implemented in BPMN models to present the rules that lead to a decision in easy-to-read tables which are executed directly by a decision engine. In addition, the integration of verifiable security labels of the manipulated data, we make sure compliance to legislation is ensured at the level of decision rules for each decision table of the DMN.

The Effect of State Data Breach Notification Laws on Medical Identity Theft

As the number of breaches in the United States grows each year, cyber-security has become an increasingly important policy area. The primary mechanism for regulating and deterring breaches is the data breach notification law. Every U.S. state now has such a law that mandates that certain organizations disclose breaches to their subjects. Despite the popularity of these laws, there is relatively little evidence about their effectiveness at deterring breaches, and therefore reducing identity theft. Using medical identity theft panel collected from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), this study implements an augmented synthetic control approach to analyze the effect of certain breach notification standards on medical identity theft.

PENCURIAN IDENTITAS KATEGORI & KASUS

Identity is a characteristic or sign that is unique and inherent in an individual and has its own valuable value in the form of information contained in it. The importance of the information contained in one's identity makes identity theft something to be wary of where losses can be in the form of finance, property, reputation and even emotional loss can also be caused by theft of identity theft. Some categories of identity theft that often occur are criminal identity theft, theft identity, identity cloning, medical identity theft, child identity theft.

Cases of Medical Identity Theft Recognized by Historical ABO Discrepancies

Cases of Medical Identity Theft Recognized by Historical ABO Discrepancies

RM Matters/Are Your Patients Who They Say They Are? Preventing Medical Identity Theft

RM Matters/<i>Are Your Patients Who They Say They Are? Preventing Medical Identity Theft</i>

Securing Electronic Medical Records Using Modified Blowfish Algorithm

EMR helped improve services to patients by delivering organization and accuracy of patient information, but issues regarding security breaches and medical identity theft are growing concerns. This paper enhance the current EMR system by integrating modified encryption. The simulation used modified Blowfish algorithm in an EMR system that focuses on four goals: 1) define the requirements, 2) design and identify features, 3) develop the EMR incorporating added security mechanism using modified Blowfish algorithm, and 4) test the application with sample data. Based on the results, the incorporation of the encryption was successful based on testing and checking done on the input terminal and the database server. Data inputted on the EMR system was successfully encrypted before transmission and decrypted only on the terminal for viewing. Performance results show that without encryption, saving took an average of 87.8ms while encrypted, it acquired 88.8ms, a difference of 1ms can be noted. The minimal difference is because of the size of the data. The average decryption time of all records using modified algorithm took 1342ms while using plaintext took 1322ms. The decryption time is higher by 20ms due to the application of the decryption algorithm.

Securing Electronic Medical Records Using Modified Blowfish Algorithm

EMR helped improve services to patients by delivering organization and accuracy of patient information, but issues regarding security breaches and medical identity theft are growing concerns. This paper enhance the current EMR system by integrating modified encryption. The simulation used modified Blowfish algorithm in an EMR system that focuses on four goals: 1) define the requirements, 2) design and identify features, 3) develop the EMR incorporating added security mechanism using modified Blowfish algorithm, and 4) test the application with sample data. Based on the results, the incorporation of the encryption was successful based on testing and checking done on the input terminal and the database server. Data inputted on the EMR system was successfully encrypted before transmission and decrypted only on the terminal for viewing. Performance results show that without encryption, saving took an average of 87.8ms while encrypted, it acquired 88.8ms, a difference of 1ms can be noted. The minimal difference is because of the size of the data. The average decryption time of all records using modified algorithm took 1342ms while using plaintext took 1322ms. The decryption time is higher by 20ms due to the application of the decryption algorithm.

IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Information Security Solutions for Telemedicine Applications

Implementing telemedicine solutions has recently become a trend among various research teams at an international level. Telemedicine refers to the use of modern information and communication technologies to meet the needs of citizens, patients, healthcare professionals, and healthcare providers, as well as policy makers. Telemedicine applications are very promising and have great potential; they can play a very important role in service provision by improving access, equity and quality through connecting healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals, and diminishing geographical and physical barriers. However, the transmission and access technologies of medical information raise critical issues that urgently need to be addressed, especially those related to security. Further, medical identity theft is a growing and dangerous crime. Stolen personal information can have a negative financial impact, but stolen medical information cuts to the very core of personal privacy. Medical identity theft already costs billions of dollars each year, and altered medical information can put a person’s health at risk through misdiagnosis, delayed treatment or incorrect prescriptions. Yet, the use of hand devices to store, access, and transmit medical information is outpacing the privacy and security protection on those devices. Therefore, the authenticity of the information and related medical images is of prime concern as they form the basis of inference for diagnostic purposes. In such applications, tamper proofing and guaranteed originality of medical data/information is achieved by embedding some kind of watermark(s) which must be secure and robust against malicious attacks. Robustness and security of medical data/information against attacks is an interesting, challenging area for researchers. Potential researchers are using watermarking and cryptography to disseminate security to the medical data. Further, noted researchers are using watermarking techniques in the field of healthcare to address health data management issues, including source and data authentication, efficient image archiving and retrieval, optimizing bandwidth required to transmit the data, and highlighting diagnostically significant regions.

Securing E-Prescription from Medical Identity Theft Using Steganography and Antiphishing Techniques

ABSTRACTDrug prescription is among the health care process that usually makes references to the patients' medical and insurance information among other personal data, because this information is very vital and delicate, it should be adequately protected from identity thieves. This article aims at securing Electronic Prescription (EP) in order to minimize patient's data theft and foster patients' trust of EP system.This paper presents a steganography and antiphishing technique for preventing medical identity theft in EP. The proposed EP system design focused on the security features in the prescriber and dispensers' modules of EP by ensuring the prescriber sends the prescription of the patient in a safe manner and to the right dispenser without the interference of fake third parties. Hexadecimal steganography image system is used to cover and secure the sent prescription details. Malicious electronic dispensing system is prevented through an authentication technique where a dispenser uses a captcha together with a one-time password, and the web server encrypted token for prescriber's device authentication. The steganography system is evaluated using Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR).The system implementation results showed that steganography and antiphishing techniques are capable of providing a secure EP systems.

Biometric Technology Towards Prevention of Medical Identity Theft: Physicians’ Perceptions

Biometric Technology Towards Prevention of Medical Identity Theft: Physicians’ Perceptions

Securing health sensing using integrated circuit metric.

Convergence of technologies from several domains of computing and healthcare have aided in the creation of devices that can help health professionals in monitoring their patients remotely. An increase in networked healthcare devices has resulted in incidents related to data theft, medical identity theft and insurance fraud. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of a secure lightweight wearable health sensing system. The proposed system is based on an emerging security technology called Integrated Circuit Metric (ICMetric) that extracts the inherent features of a device to generate a unique device identification. In this paper, we provide details of how the physical characteristics of a health sensor can be used for the generation of hardware “fingerprints”. The obtained fingerprints are used to deliver security services like authentication, confidentiality, secure admission and symmetric key generation. The generated symmetric key is used to securely communicate the health records and data of the patient. Based on experimental results and the security analysis of the proposed scheme, it is apparent that the proposed system enables high levels of security for health monitoring in resource optimized manner.

Medical Identity Theft: Prevention and Reconciliation Initiatives at Massachusetts General Hospital

Medical identity theft refers to the misuse of another individual's identifying medical information to receive medical care. Beyond the financial burden on patients, hospitals, health insurance companies, and government insurance programs, undetected cases pose major patient safety challenges. Inaccuracies in the medical record may persist even after the theft has been identified because of restrictions imposed by patient privacy laws. Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH; Boston) has conducted initiatives to prevent medical identity theft and to better identify and respond to cases when they occur. Since 2007, MGH has used a notification tree to standardize reporting of red flag incidents (warning signs of identity theft, such as suspicious personal identifiers or account activity). A Data Integrity Dashboard allows for tracking and reviewing of all potential incidents of medical identity theft to detect trends and targets for mitigation. An identity-checking policy, VERI-(Verify Everyone's Identity) Safe Patient Care, requires photo identification at every visit and follow-up if it is not provided. Data from MGH suggest that an estimated 120 duplicate medical records are created each month, 25 patient encounters are likely tied to identity theft or fraud each quarter, and 14 patients are treated under the wrong medical record number each year. As of December 2013, 80%-85% of patients were showing photo identification at appointments. Although an organization's policy changes and educational campaigns can improve detection and reconciliation of medical identity theft cases, national policies should be implemented to streamline the process of correcting errors in medical records, reduce the financial disincentive for hospitals to detect and report cases, and create a single point of entry to reduce the burden on individuals and providers to reconcile cases.

Augmenting security and accountability within the eHealth Exchange

The increased use of electronic medical records and online sharing of such records is motivated by improved quality of healthcare delivery. However, this use has raised security and privacy concerns because sensitive medical data could be exposed to a variety of threats that exist in the online world, leading to problems such as medical identity theft and billing fraud. If not addressed, such concerns could become a barrier to the large-scale adoption and sharing of electronic medical records. To ease such concerns, we argue that the eHealth Exchange, which is a federal initiative for online exchange of healthcare information, needs to be augmented to provide greater patient awareness and control. We take an approach that informs the patient when her health data is accessed by a healthcare enterprise that is not already trusted by the patient. Such awareness is ensured even when some systems in the health information sharing environment become compromised. We enhance accountability support within eHealth Exchange by using digitally signed logs of sharing records that cannot be modified or refuted. We implement and evaluate these mechanisms in the open-source CONNECT system that follows the eHealth Exchange specifications.

Challenges of Deploying RFID Technology for Reducing Medical Identity Theft

Challenges of Deploying RFID Technology for Reducing Medical Identity Theft

Physician Medical Identity Theft

IT TOOK SEVERAL MONTHS FOR ONE PHYSICIAN TO LEARN THAT she was a victim of medical identity theft. This realization occurred after patients reported that her name was on their Medicare Summary Notices although they had never seen her. A fraudulent clinical practice had enrolled in Medicareusinghernamewithoutherknowledge.Anotherphysician had retired from clinical practice but decided to work part-time. Nearly 2 years after sending out job applications, he was asked by Medicare to return more than $350 000 in overpayments made to a practice he had interviewed with but never joined. The Department of Treasury began to garnish his Social Security payments for unpaid debts. Investigation revealed that both stolen identities were part of a complex Medicare fraud scheme that victimized numerous physicians and resulted in the criminal conviction of 6 perpetrators. The physicians’ identities have been restored and their financial liabilities and enrollment records have been cleared, but this situation highlights the importance of understanding and preventing physician medical identity theft. Scope of the Issue Medical identity theft is the appropriation or misuse of a patient’s or physician’s unique medical identifying information to obtain or bill public or private payers for fraudulent medicalgoodsorservices.Forphysicians, this information includes theNationalProviderIdentifier(NPI),TaxIdentificationNumber (TIN), and medical licensure information. Recent data revealthatmorethan3600casesof(physicianandpatient)medical identity theft were reported to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2009, with more than 12 000 cases reported between 2007-2009. It is likely that substantial medical identity theft is unreported. FTC data also show that 32% of thefts are discovered more than 1 year after they occur. The Center for Program Integrity (CPI) at the Centers for MedicareM medical job