In a very busy nurses’ station a very pregnant, Spanish-speaking only patient, waddles up to the front desk. She hands the unit secretary her medical card, who then proceeds to admit “Scarlett O’Hara” into the system. Voices whisper and eyes roll, but the staff continue to give the patient the care they would give anyone, and help her bring her child into the world with respect and compassion. This current practice however, is about to change.
The federal government is mandating that health care providers install new safeguards against medical identity theft by the spring. Federal regulators insist these safeguards will decrease rising health care costs and protect against medical errors due to corrupt medical records. For example, if someone is using your identity to receive medical care, their medical conditions will then become part of your medical records and health history. This could potentially lead to mis- diagnoses and treatments. According to the Chicago Tribune:
“In May, health-care providers will be required to have in place new federal guidelines designed to block the theft of identities from roughly 250,000 people a year and risks inserting misinformation into their medical records. Hospital surveys and government data indicate illegal Immigration plays a minor role in the overall problem. But some activists say undocumented immigrants who need long-term care—but have no legal claim to public aid—are using stolen IDs more frequently than officials suspect.”
No one knows the full scope of medical identity theft in the United States. Some estimates put the number of victims between 250,000 to 500,000 individuals. This may be even higher because some victims are unaware that they have had their identities stolen. Medical identity theft leads to millions of dollars of lost revenue and fraud for health care providers and taxpayers.
The American Medical Association is against the federal mandates that put pressure on health care providers to figure out the safeguards to prevent medical identity theft. The AMA feels it will deter patients from seeking care out of fear, and these patients will delay care until they are gravely ill. This will then add even more cost on to the system. It also turns health care providers into police, turning their focus away from treating patients to checking if they have valid ID’s.
As a nurse, it makes me uncomfortable to have to interrogate my patients to make sure they have the proper ID. What if they don’t? We are still obligated by law to treat, but do we then call the police to have patients arrested in the hospital? I don’t think so. While medical identity theft is reprehensible, it should not be the responsibility of health care providers to reign in the offenders. Also, as the Chicago Tribune reported, only a small fraction of medical identity theft is believed to be from illegal immigrants, yet they will surely be the focus of the scrutiny. Will nurses need to resort to racial profiling when admitting their patients to the unit? It appears to be a very slippery slope we will be mandated to climb.
Click here to read the entire Chicago Tribune article profiling medical identity theft. The article left quite a heated debate in the comments section, that turned into a debate against illegal immigration. The story itself was tragic and frustrating at the same time. It examined the case of an illegal immigrant from Mexico named “Gloria” who was diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer shortly after arriving in America. She stole another woman’s identity and recieved a half a million dollars in free care, under another woman’s name. Click the link for more details on this story.
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