ShareThisWASHINGTON - A Catch-22 that keeps victims of medical identity theft from seeing and fixing false -- and potentially harmful -- health records created in their names needs to be fixed, the top Democrat on a House health subcommittee said Tuesday.
Rep. Frank Pallone, N.J., ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's health subcommittee, said Tuesday he is working to alter a federal law that hospitals have used to keep medical identity theft victims from accessing and correcting inaccurate files left by impostors.
Hospital industry officials say federal privacy rules prevent them from allowing ID theft victims to obtain the records left by fraudsters.
Pallone said he wants to make the change either by clarifying federal rules or by passing a new law.
"We need to have some regulatory change or legislation ... that would give hospitals direction so patients could see the file and correct it," Pallone said.
The lawmaker's comments come in response to a Scripps Howard News Service investigation published March 16, which found that victims of medical identity theft have no recourse for identifying and correcting the damage left by ID thieves.
Overall, medical identity theft affects 1.5 million Americans, according to an estimate by Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Traverse City, Mich.-based Ponemon Institute think tank. The crime can take many forms, including fraudulent billing schemes, drug abusers who steal identities to access prescriptions and cash payouts, or simply individuals who need care but do not want to pay.
Pallone's office is researching the issue by working with hospitals in New Jersey and the American Hospital Association. New Jersey hospitals contacted by Pallone's office said they are concerned about medical identity theft and aware of the access issues raised by the federal medical privacy rules.
His office will also contact the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees medical privacy rules laid out in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
The federal agency says hospitals should allow ID theft victims to see and correct records. However, the agency acknowledges that medical providers refuse requests because of their strict interpretation of HIPAA.
But even when hospitals do grant victims access to the records, there is no standard for fixing the files, Ponemon and others told Scripps Howard.
Pallone said he wants to fix this.
"There is a problem, and, many times, patients are not able to see the file," Pallone said. "If they do see it, they want to be able to correct it."
(Email reporter Isaac Wolf at wolfi(at)shns.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
