It’s traumatic when you or a loved one is admitted to a hospital. There’s so much to worry about. However, the protection of your private health care information should not be one of them. Although there has been a rash of celebrity information being compromised during recent admissions to a hospital, you don’t have to have a star status to ensure your health care information is safe.

To make sure your private health information stays that way, here are 3 questions to ask during the admission process:

1. Does your organization do background checks on all employees?

2. Who has access to my information?

3. Where will my records be stored and will they be encrypted?

If the person admitting you  (or the pre – admission process) can’t answer the above questions, ask to speak to a supervisor who has the answers. If he or she doesn’t know, then ask to speak to the Director of Nursing, or Chief Nursing Officer.

While you may feel this over cautious, we are hearing of  Identity Theft Rings run from a hospital by an admissions clerk as in this case in Alabama: Leader of Identity Theft Ring Sentenced to prison.

Obviously an admission in an emergency you can’t do this process.  This may be a reason to consider having Identity Protection and Recovery. If you want to know more  about being proactive instead of reactive connect with me here:    http://www.theidentityadvocate.com/identity-theft-protection.php.

Keep your piece of mind.

Tags: computer security, data security, electronic health records, medical identity theft

This Entry was posted by Linda Vincent

Thursday, June 13th, 2013 / Electonic identity theft, Fraud, Health Care Fraud, Identity Theft, Medical IdentityTheft.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.