Healthcare insurance fraud is becoming more of an issue day-by-day that can cause a victim to lose thousands of dollars and gain a huge amount of stress. Below are 10 useful tips to help you protect yourself from health insurance fraud.
1.) Don’t over share
Avoid sharing personal information at doctor offices or hospitals as much as you can. You don’t want your social security number or your driver’s license number getting into the wrong hands. A common method criminal’s use with healthcare insurance fraud is getting your information by pretending to be a representative at a health insurance company or a doctor’s office. Be sure to ask if that information is really needed and what it’s needed for.
2.) Be wary of suspicious e-mails
Do not click on emails that are unrecognizable and do not respond to emails that ask for sensitive personal information unless you have verified that the source is real.
3.) Consistently check your records
A common mistake that healthcare insurance fraud victims do is not pay attention to emails they receive. Closely evaluate all your health records, including what’s in your email for strange or unrecognizable activity, as well as health conditions you don’t have. If you spot something that is worrisome, call your primary-care provider and insurance company as soon as possible.
4.) Monitor your credit
Most of the time cases of identity theft, via healthcare insurance fraud, are not discovered until it’s too late and will sometimes take 3 months or longer to detect. To avoid such circumstances from happening be sure to check your credit report once a year to see if someone is using your data improperly.
5.) Be wary of online applications
Think carefully before placing personal information in wearables, such as Fitbits or any type of mobile app and health websites. Doing so can put you at risk of data theft.
6.) Be aware of where you store your information
You want to treat your medical data the way that you would treat your tax returns. If you have your data on anything digital, you want to make sure you have it password protected and encrypted. If you have physical copies of your sensitive personal information, you want to place those in a locked file cabinet.
7.) Pick either paper or digital records. Not both.
Using both methods can double your risk of data theft. It is much more efficient to choose one method or the other.
8.) Invest in protective software
Buy high-quality virus and malware protection software for extra protection against data theft.
9.) Avoid public Wi-Fi
Even amateur hackers can obtain information from anyone using public wi-fi. It is wise to not log into health care apps that have sensitive information while using public wi-fi.
10.) Watch your cloud account
Try to avoid storing sensitive accounts and important files on your cloud account because if you have too much important data stored in one online digital place it’s easier for a hacker to obtain it all if it is not secured properly. It is best to use an external hard drive at home that is encrypted and password protected.
Since insurance is often times overwhelmingly confusing, we want to shed light on this industry by answering YOUR questions. If you have any questions or concerns, comment below and your question may be the topic of our next video!
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