Industry News:
Watch Out For In-House Identity Thieves
Published on Tue Jul 28, 2009
Here's how one agency acted quickly to protect its client's privacy. If you think your patients' confidential identity information is always safe in your staffers' hands, think again. The Minnesota Department of Health's Office of Health Facility Complaints (OHFC) has substantiated a complaint against a St. Paul home health aide accused of using her patient's identity to open a line of credit, KSTP channel 5 news reports. The aide's employer, Home Instead Senior Care of Coon Rapids, first caught wind of the scam when one of its clients received a credit card he never applied for. He contacted his bank and began the process of tracing how his credit was being used. During that time, the aide attempted to pay a $572.26 cell phone bill using the illegal card. Aide's excuse: The aide first attempted to avoid criminal charges by claiming that the client wanted to take over her cell [...]