Identity Theft

Information Breach

Introduction

More people today become victims of information breach, such as identity theft. Patients in hospitals and healthcare facilities rank number one of victims affected by identity theft. The following paragraphs will provide a synopsis of recent cases wherein patients in a Miami hospital were victims of identity theft. Preventive measures will also entail.

Identity Theft

A team of three committed fraudulent acts against patients in a Miami hospital. One of the three was an employee at the hospital who would sell patient information to the other two members of the team. Alci Bonannee (Bonannee) and Chante Mozley (Mozley) filed taxes using social security numbers (SSN) form patients of the hospital and then collect the tax refunds. This is just one of many stories wherein employees privy to patient information can sell SSN for up to $150 per number. The team committed the crimes between June 2011 and February 2012 stealing the identity of 834 patients. The hospital dismissed Betty Cole (Cole), a respiratory therapist and prosecuted her to the fullest (Mashihy, 2013).

Identity theft within the health care systems of Florida became prevalent four years ago. Hundreds of thousands of reports enter the Department of Health recording patients affected by information breaches. Memorial Healthcare System reported the largest number of patients affected totaling 111,650. HITECH, the federal act protecting patient information requires hospital to report breaches against 500 patients or more. Hospitals and health insurance companies agreed to work with the IRS to combat identity theft (Mashihy, 2013).

Accordingly, Cole faces seven years in prison after pleading guilty. Bonannee is serving a 26 year prison sentence and Mozley will serve a 42 month prison sentence. As mentioned above, incidents, such as this, are too common in the healthcare systems. Fraudulent employees study and become well aware of how to work around the security systems associated with most computers (McGee, 2013).

Unfortunately, a similar case in New York made the news. An employee from the South Shore Physicians on Staten Island stole patient information from paper records for 80 patients or more. The employee used the information to request new bank cards and made withdrawals form the patients’ bank accounts. Of course there are ways to prevent this form of identity theft from occurring (McGee, 2013).

According