Medical identity theft happens when another person uses your identity to acquire medical goods or services. The problem is that when this occurs, the imposter’s medical treatment gets put into your medical files. If your imposter has a different medical condition than you do, then your medical file can contain errors. It is important to correct errors in your medical file that occur as a result of medical identity theft. One of the potential challenges with exchanging your medical records in a health information exchange is that if medical identity theft happens, the erroneous file can be spread far afield through the HIE. Here’s how to begin approaching the challenges.

The World Privacy Forum filed technical comments on the IDPV National Standard Project today, offering key privacy recommendations on the proposed standard, Requirements and Implementation Guidelines for Assertion, Resolution, Evidence, and Verification of Personal Identity, version 5.3.1. WPF analyzed the proposed standard carefully, and sees the need for several changes to the standard to improve consumer privacy. In our comments, the intent is to help create a standard that increases security, trustworthiness of identities, and identity credentials while protecting individual privacy.

HIE stands for “Health Information Exchange.” We encourage all patients to request a copy of their medical records and check for errors, whether on paper or digital. If you have received a copy of your medical record from your doctor and you find mistakes or errors, it is a good idea to correct those files as soon as possible with that health care provider. It’s also important to see if incorrect information has been circulated into a Health Information Exchange, and get it corrected there as well. See more ….

Community Health System suffers sophisticated attack from hackers Community Health Systems announced a serious data breach impacting 4.5 million patients across the US, spanning 28 states and covering information gathered over the past five years. The company announced the breach in its SEC filings, and described the breach as originating from China, and as an “Advanced

Today, health insurers Blue Shield of California and Anthem Blue Cross announced the creation of a statewide database of patient medical records in California called Cal INDEX. When it launches later this year, it will be the country’s largest health information exchange, or HIE. The exchange is set to disseminate patient’s longitudinal medical files, and