It is not a strict legal requirement to tell patients about the risk of identity theft, but not telling them could have serious consequences, both for the person involved and for the hospital or clinical practitioner who chose not to tell the patients about the risk of identity theft. In this article, we'll look at a few ideas that can help you figure out how, when, and if you should tell your patients about the risk of identity theft.
The first rule you should always try to follow is to keep your data safe. If there are good security systems in place, it should be rare that patients need to be told about security problems. Data security includes systems like strong passwords on all of your computers, data encryption, anti-spyware software, and any other security measures that your IT experts may suggest. If these security measures are strictly followed and staff is trained on how important data privacy is, then patients should only be told about the risk of identity theft very rarely.
Some people think that if you tell patients too often about the risk of identity theft, they won't take it as seriously. However, if you have the right security systems in place, you shouldn't have to do it too often, and it is important to let patients know if there is a real risk of identity theft so they can take precautions.
If the risk of identity theft is high in a certain security breach, patients should be told about it as soon as possible. They should also be told what the hospital is doing to find the suspect and stop any more damage from happening.
In these situations, it would also be helpful to tell worried patients what steps they should take to protect themselves, such as contacting the credit bureaus, creditors, and other parties.
It is not a strict legal requirement for hospitals to tell patients about the risk of identity theft. However, if hospitals are found to be negligent in this area, they could be fined millions of dollars. The patients could also be in danger, both financially and because their personal health information could fall into the wrong hands. All data security measures should be in place long before this happens, but if there is a serious risk of identity theft, patients should be notified quickly and given advice on how to protect themselves and what the hospital is doing in this area.
Take the time to keep your identity safe so that you don't have to go through the loss too. If you pay your bills online, you should only do so on secure sites. With so many good firewalls and computer programmes like Norton's anti-virus, it's hard to get around these security measures.
