This is a tough situation: While attempting to protect medical records, laws have actually made it harder to investigate medical fraud.
The LA Times reports on a recent incident in which a retired school teacher is billed for the alleged amputation of her right foot — actually having to send notarized photos of that foot to prove the doctors didn’t actually remove it!
How did all this happen? An ID thief actually assumed her identity to receive medical treatment, presumably having a foot removed and in the process rang up the bill the school teacher received. While attempting to investigate this case of ID Theft, the victim found that the very laws made to protect her medical privacy were interfering with her ability to investigate her own medical records.
I don’t think freemedicalrecordreport.com is going to be as successful as annualcreditreport.com given that patients can have a tough time obtaining their own medical records. As the LATimes puts it:
The bitter twist on medical identity theft is that once a person tells
a keeper of records that someone else’s data might be intermingled, the
file becomes even harder to obtain. Why? Because it includes another
person’s medical history, which many hospitals argue can’t be turned
over without consent.
Perhaps, you have something interesting to say?