The current healthcare infrastructure is delicate and relatively easy to access—which means thieves can obtain and fraudulently the health information of your high net-worth clients. Here’s how you can protect your clients’ digital medical files while making your family office or business management firm even more valuable.
The rapid digitization of the healthcare industry has made it easier than ever for your clients to share their medical data with healthcare professionals. Unfortunately, the speed at which that digitization has occurred has left the industry with a weakened overall infrastructure that takes little effort to exploit. This means tech-savvy thieves have unprecedented access to medical files and the sensitive data they contain, making it easy for them to target your high-value clients.
Healthcare Records Contain Your Clients’ Most Sensitive Data
“A great deal of delicate personal information is held in modern digital medical records,” says Scott Speranza, CEO of medical data protection company InAssist. “Once a thief obtains this information, it’s shockingly easy for them to commit medical fraud.”
Your clients’ medical data contains their names and home addresses, along with their healthcare providers, health insurance information, diagnoses, and prescriptions. They may also contain credit card information, bank routing numbers, and login passwords for their particular health insurance facility.
Just one or two pieces of the above information gives thieves and fraudsters the opportunity to turn your clients into victims of healthcare fraud.
Healthcare Fraud And Overbilling Are Occurring More Often—here’s Why
Your wealthy clients are in a position of great privilege; they can likely afford outstanding health insurance. Those excellent insurance plans make them prime targets for overbilling, where their insurance information is used to submit overpriced claims.
More ambitious thieves can take control of their entire medical identity, using your clients’ health insurance information to obtain medical care and treatments—including expensive, often strictly regulated drugs—for themselves and others.
The weakness of the current healthcare infrastructure is largely due to its current composition. Each healthcare facility—from doctors’ offices to hospitals—and each insurance company has its own structure. These structures need to be able to “talk” to each other and share information. This leaves vulnerable entry points for thieves to get into—entry points that only increased in number in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a swift shift to telehealth.
The weaknMore worryingly, facilities often contain medical devices that can act as additional entry points to internal networks. If not properly secured, these devices may remain connected to facility networks or even to the internet, which allows them to be searched and controlled by outsiders. Common procedures like medical imaging can be intercepted and altered, making them easy assets to use in a fraud scheme.
Medical Records Are A New Target For Criminals
Despite over $325 billion lost in medical fraud and Theft of patient data has life-altering consequences for victims.
- Healthcare data breaches rose 55% in 2020.
- Severe delays in detecting and stopping breaches can lead to billions lost per year.
- Lax cybersecurity may lead to losses of over $300 billion in the next five years.
The Lack Of Cybersecurity In Healthcare Puts Your Clients At Risk
Despite the rising number of problems associated with delicate infrastructure, a recent survey indicated 87% of IT leaders in the healthcare area stated they don’t have the right number of cybersecurity experts. In 2017, three out of four U.S. healthcare organizations didn’t even have a cybersecurity professional on staff!
The lax cybersecurity standards have emboldened thieves; in 2020, healthcare data breaches jumped 55% over the number that occurred in 2019. You’re right to be concerned for your clients—there isn’t really a way to opt out of weak healthcare infrastructure, as everyone needs medical care at some point. Meanwhile, medical data is rising in value, and obtaining it to use for fraudulent purposes is becoming more and more common.
It’s time to start thinking of medical data as the asset it is. Your clients should see their medical privacy as part of their wealth and something to be protected. This is a place where the family office or business management firm can step in: you already manage their wealth and assets, so taking on this duty is a natural extension of your existing services.
How To Turn Your Family Office Or Business Management Firm Into Your Clients’ First Line Of Protection
In general, it’s far easier to prevent fraud than try to stop it once it has begun. Unfortunately, some 30% of medical identity theft victims don’t know when the theft first occurred.
“Often, victims of healthcare fraud don’t realize something is wrong until they receive an outrageous bill, or they find that they’ve been diagnosed with a disease they don’t have, or been prescribed the wrong medication,”
“There is not much we can do about shoring up infrastructure itself; the industry needs to work that out on its own. What we can do is carefully monitor all healthcare transactions to ensure it’s your client making those transactions, and not a thief or fraudster.”
Scott Speranza, CEO of inAssist
It’s the monitoring that can effectively cut off overbilling and other types of fraud just as they begin. Family offices and business management firms can offer this service by partnering with companies like InAssist, which will carefully examine each bill or an explanation of benefits. By reviewing medical codes and communicating with healthcare professionals and insurance companies, these experts can determine whether a transaction is legitimate or fraudulent in nature.
Fraud Experts Will Stop The Crime Before It Can Spiral Out Of Control
If there fraud is suspected, InAssist and companies like them will be responsible for following up, acting on your clients’ behalf to protect their health records, insurance information, and wallets. If there is a data breach and your clients’ data is captured, these specialists can put proprietary technology to work to prevent medical identity theft.
Your clients deserve the peace of mind that comes with knowing their medical data is being protected while we learn to navigate healthcare’s delicate digital infrastructure. Partnering with an industry expert will help your family office or business management firm give them that peace, as well as making you all the more valuable and essential to their lives.
Sources:
https://cyberpeaceinstitute.org/report/2021-03-CyberPeaceInstitute-SAR001-Healthcare.pdf
https://www.cisecurity.org/blog/cyber-attacks-in-the-healthcare-sector/
https://www.aha.org/center/cybersecurity-and-risk-advisory-services/importance-cybersecurity-protecting-patient-safety
https://swivelsecure.com/solutions/healthcare/healthcare-is-the-biggest-target-for-cyberattacks/
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/ransomware-attacks-cost-healthcare-industry-21b-2020-here-s-how-many-attacks-hit-providers
https://medcitynews.com/2021/02/report-healthcare-data-breaches-spiked-55-in-2020/
https://static.nationwide.com/static/2014_Medical_ID_Theft_Study.pdf?r=65
