Sometime back the healthcare sector including hospitals and health service providers are using conventional methods in their daily practices. These traditional techniques no longer exist in the digital world since medical ID theft is on the rise and fraudsters are getting better day by day.
That being said, patient data is on the verge of many risks including data breaches, impersonation fraud, digital identity theft, and many more by 2026. The total losses in the healthcare industry are forecasted to reach $4500 million which is quite a lot when talking about numbers.
The only viable solution for the healthcare industry is to start adopting digital, reliable, and automated solutions which are much more efficient, quick, and offer greater convenience to both patients and healthcare personnel. You can check Revenue Cycle Management Company in Texas.
By digitally verifying the IDs of patients, health care providers can achieve many benefits at scale. Here are 4 ways how these intelligent ID verification solutions are helping solve health hazards.
Protecting Patient Data Privacy
Because of the constant demand of consumers, the healthcare sector is rapidly switching to digital and automated solutions through which they can easily and effectively identify and verify customers and patients.
Given the fact that these ID verification solutions are direly needed, patient privacy and protecting customer data are the major concerns when working with these systems. Since medical records contain a greater amount of information including identity details and medical diagnosis history, they are sold for as much as 1000 USD on the darknet. This is the major challenge faced by the healthcare industry which needs to be solved immediately.
A cybersecurity system is not the only solution in safeguarding data, since the current customers who can be potential fraudsters can get into the system easily. Online ID verification makes sure that identity thieves do not get to open accounts with healthcare businesses, thus preventing digital health fraud in the initial stage.
Compliance Responsibilities
As for the financial industry, there are many regulations, but when we step into the healthcare sector, there are also different procedures and policies that need to be followed. The most important law in healthcare in the US is HIPAA, which stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which has one main purpose: to protect the privacy of electronic health records.
According to this healthcare law, hospitals and relevant healthcare authorities are required to verify patients through their ID documents for granting them Health Insurance agreements, handing out prescriptions, and carrying out medical treatment and lab tests, etc.
Since some of these regulations also take into account Anti Money Laundering (AML) obligations as well, they are a good source of complying with state-of-the-art rules and laws.
To stay compliant with regulations like HIPAA, digital ID verification allows a quick mechanism to Know Your Customer (KYC) through which patients can be verified. A reliable and robust ID verification service can enable the healthcare sector to not only benefit in terms of regulatory compliance but also to keep off fraudsters.
The Challenge to Combat Medical Identity Theft
In the Healthcare sector, medical ID theft is one big challenge. When we look at the numbers, they are quite staggering. A single patient identity is sold on the black market for 10 times more than what a credit card data breach values.
The purpose of stealing this personally identifiable information is to gain financial profit, buy drugs at the pharmacy with a false prescription, or file false health insurance claims in someone else’s name.
In July 2020, the Health and Human Services Department in the US, HHS, found that there were around 30 data breaches in healthcare affecting almost 500 patients at scale. Due to the covid-19 pandemic, this could turn into a disaster if not handled properly.
Enabling quick ID verification can not only reduce the chances of medical ID theft but also reduce the number of data breaches. Healthcare providers can now ask their patients and customers to submit their government-issued original ID documents along with a selfie on which they can run identity-based checks to verify them in real-time, and with remarkable accuracy, using digital ID verification.
These solutions come with artificial intelligence models which perform a detailed analysis on both the ID documents and the users facial features to compare relevant information and produce a foolproof authentication.
Also read this My Investment Playbook