Medical Identity Theft - What to Do If You Are a Victim

By Tina L Douglas 

Identity theft is a crime that is constantly threatening society. There are different types of identity theft. The most common type of identity theft-financial fraud-can cause you serious damage on your wallet. On the other hand, medical identity theft, another type of fraud, can kill you.

Unlike financial identity theft, medical records are pretty hard to undo. There are a lot of details (very sensitive ones) that needs to be considered and medical practitioners are not very likely to change this information since medical records include information that can seriously affect another person's life. If you have been a victim of this type of crime, then you need to fully resolve your credit report and to clean up your medical files as well.

Medical identity theft is harder to detect as compared to financial identity theft. More often than not, you need to look in different places to discover that you've already been a victim of this particular crime. For instance, you will only know that your medical information has been stolen when a creditor calls you up or sends you a notice. Some people often find errors in their medical which then prompts them to believe that their identity has been stolen. Others more are denied of their insurance or medical claim benefits before they learn that somebody else have been doing all these things under their name and without their consent.

If you want to prevent all these things from happening to you, then here are some necessary steps that you should take:

1. Public and private health insurance companies often send "Explanation benefits" and you have to closely monitor them.

Just like credit reports, you need to carefully review your insurance statements. If you see any inconsistency or if anything appear wrong then you need to immediately raise these questions with your health care provider. Some problems that you may incur if you do not monitor your insurance statements include being charged for medical services that you did not receive or for office visits that you did not make. These are just like credit card statements where often, you will be charged with medical equipments that you did not order and receive.

2. Every year request your health insurance provider to send you a list of benefits.

This is something that you should do once a year. You have to ask your provider the total list of benefits that have been provided or paid under your name. Once you have these, do not just leaf through the pages. You need to closely monitor every payment that has been made as well as any charges that have been incurred. Make sure that you can credit all of them or else, you need to call your insurer to double check the credits or payments that have been done that you were not made aware of.

As with any other cases of identity theft, vigilance is always the key to preventing yourself from identity thief.

Tina L. Douglas is a skilled writer from California. With numerous experiences in the field of writing for several financial institutions, she is greatly qualified across a variety of economic issues. Her notable pieces of writing involve credit monitoring trial [http://creditmonitoringtrial.com/] and credit protection company [http://creditprotectioncompanies.com/].

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