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Health Care Industry Fraud Experts Share Wisdom on Fighting Fraud

UC's CIMIP Contributes to Effort to Curb, Deal With Medical Identity Fraud

Contact - cleogrande@utica.edu

Utica, NY (11/01/2016) - The Medical Identity Fraud Alliance (MIFA) released a paper based on the collective expertise of its members and partners, to help businesses within the health care industry better understand how to deal with medical identity fraud.

Health Care Industry Wisdom on Medical Identity Fraud offers various food-for-thought on what a health care organization or business associate might consider when building or fine-tuning their anti-fraud programs. The expertise shared in the paper is not considered industry guidelines, however, organizations are encouraged to pick and choose what is appropriate for their individual environments.

“Medical identity fraud represents a growing menace that can jeopardize the victim’s health and lead to serious out-of-pocket costs to the victim,” says Don Rebovich, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Center for Identity Management and Information Protection - Utica College. “MIFA’s paper provides critical information on steps the health care industry can take to effectively counteract the criminal efforts of identity fraudsters. By carefully assessing the challenges of protecting digital medical identities and furnishing recommendations for proactively preventing and responding to medical identity fraud, MIFA has provided an indispensable tool toward neutralizing the ever-changing arsenal of deceptive actions employed by the “new age” medical identity fraudster.”

The changing landscape of the health care industry, including emerging technologies and factors that may lead to the increase in medical identity fraud, provide the background for further discussion of specific areas related to medical identity fraud. Topics discussed in the paper include a look at the Medical Loss Ratio mandate and how it may be affecting health plans’ ability to invest more heavily in fraud prevention, health IT issues, and patient authentication.

Paige Schaffer, President and COO of Generali Global Assistance’s Identity and Digital Protection Services Global Unit, commented, “Medical identity theft is especially concerning because it can be life-threatening. In order to combat this threat, it is critical that leaders in the healthcare space and other industries unite to implement best practices to protect individuals from identity fraud. We are proud to partner with MIFA on this paper as we seek to educate the market on risk vector identification and mitigation, as well as other initiatives to reduce the harmful impact of identity theft.”

The paper is available at http://medidfraud.org/paper-healthcare-industry-wisdom-on-medical-identity-fraud/.

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About the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance (MIFA)
MIFA is an industry trade association of health care providers, payers and service provider stakeholders, working to help its members better protect consumers from medical identity theft and fraud, through research, public-private collaboration and information sharing. Members provide leadership to: mobilize the healthcare ecosystem; cooperate to leverage collective intellectual capita; research to adequately understand the problem and guide solution building; and educate consumers, industry and government on medical identity theft and fraud issues. For more information visit http://medidfraud.org/.