RED FLAGS RULE:
No Red Flags Program? You Could Be Losing Thousands
Published on Tue Mar 10, 2009
Tip: Institute your Red Flags program ASAP. You may think the government is implementing the Red Flags Rule in the distant future -- but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will begin enforcing it on May 1 -- and it can't come soon enough for some practices. Under the Red Flags Rule, your practice will be required to spot the "red flags" that can signal identity theft. Just last week, a Long Island medical office employee was charged with stealing patients' identities from medical files and using the information to go on a spending spree. Point of contention: In preparing their Red Flags programs, some practices plan to check patients' identification cards, and some choose to make photocopies or scan the photo ID cards to ensure that patients who present them are using their own insurance cards. However, several practices report that they've heard that they should not keep copies of patients' IDs [...]