The rising threat of medical identity theft

In this digital information age, it’s imperative to closely guard personal information. If you pay attention to the news, you’re familiar with the concept of identity theft, the potential loss of financial information. However, there’s a new emerging type of identity theft — medical identity theft — and it can literally kill you.   

Medical identity theft occurs when someone uses a person’s name and sometimes other parts of their identity — such as insurance information — without the individual’s knowledge or consent to obtain medical services or goods, or uses the person’s identity to make false claims for medical services or goods.