How Can Medical Identity Theft Affect Patient Safety

BU917 Prof. Brenda Warr

Ethical Issues in HIM

Question 1 – How can medical identity theft affect patient safety? Medical identity theft is when someone steals your personal information (like your name, social security number, or Medicare number) to obtain medical care, buy drugs, or submit fake billings to Medicare in your name. This definition alone is enough to explain how the safety of a patient can be affected if their medical identity is stolen. Having the name and/ or social security number is enough to even go further than just affecting patient safety; it can impact their everyday life outside of the medical field. If a person has the name, social security number, and the medical number basically gives that person
23 academic institutions authorized a research project on premature babies, which included over 1,300 premature babies that were born between 24 and 27 weeks of growth or pregnancy. According to the article the project did not give an informed consent document that informed the parents of the risks or the benefits of the research on their premature babies. Basically, as explained in the article “The underdeveloped lungs in such babies are often unable to extract enough oxygen from the air to nourish the brain, so doctors often supply extra oxygen. The danger is that too much oxygen can cause severe eye damage and blindness, whereas too little can lead to brain damage and death.” (Board, 2013, p. 1) In order to provide the necessary care to the babies the blood is to be saturated with 85 to 95 percent oxygen. The researchers were trying to found a more precise or direct range so that there would be less damage to the eyes without the risk of death raising. The study was financed by the National Institutes of Health and the research project had 1,300 of the babies randomly divided into two groups. One of the groups received a lower range of oxygen while the other group had the babies receive a higher range of oxygen. It was stated that the consent forms did not reveal this production “in this case, the federal Office for Human Research Protections concluded that the consent forms failed to reveal that there was a greater risk of dying in the low-oxygen group and a greater risk of severe eye damage in the high oxygen group. The form also stated that, because both groups would receive oxygen within the standard of care, there would be no predictable increase in risk no matter which group a baby was in.” (Board, 2013, p. 2) The federal agency found that the risks could have