Health IT Law Blog : Health IT Law Blog : Post & Schell: Law Firm : HIT & Electronic Health Records

Just days prior to the latest enforcement deadline of the Red Flags Rule ("RFR"), medical and osteopathic associations sued the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the applicability of RFR's identity theft prevention requirements to their member organizations.  FTC is to begin enforcement of the Rule on June 1, 2010.  Among other claims, medical associations are seeking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to prevent the FTC from defining healthcare providers as "creditors" under FACTA.  According to Health Data Management:

'The worst part is, I think, from a strictly ethical point of view, that you have to approach every new patient with suspicion about their identity,' said AMA spokesman Robert Mills. 'That violates every precept of the physician-patient relationship; the FTC is asking doctors to violate their role as trusted healer and counselor.'

The physician groups say that the rule requires them to set up identity theft prevention and detection programs, which aren't necessary, and said the FTC was 'arbitrary and capricious' in extending the application of the law to them. Also, the extension of the Red Flag Rule to doctors would do nothing to improve care, the physician groups say.

<...> According to the lawsuit, complying with the Red Flags Rule 'imposes significant burdens on physicians, particularly sole practitioners, and those practicing in small groups.'

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• According to LA Weekly, Huping Zhou, a former employee at the UCLA Healthcare System, pleaded guilty to federal charges of breaches of patient privacy.  Zhou, 48, accessed the UCLA patient records system 323 times during the three-week period, mostly looking for the files of celebrities, after being let go by the hospital. Names of targeted celebrities have not been revealed.  This case follows a similar breach at UCLA Medical Center, when Lawanda Jackson, a former nurse at the Center, plead guilty to wrongfully accessing information of Britney Spears and Farrah Fawcett.

• Delaware Online reports about a new unfortunate trend in medical identity theft -- searching for copies of discarded prescriptions:  "In the latest crime trend to hit Delaware, police are reporting that people looking for drugs such as Oxycontin and Vicodin are stalking customers who throw away prescription bags containing paperwork with details about their pills and themselves. They use the personal information to call in prescriptions and charge them to the victims' insurance. Then they turn around and sell the drugs."  According to Bruce DiVincenzo, chief agent of Delaware's Office of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs:

They're making their own scripts by ordering paper from the Internet," he said. "It's the patient's name that they want, because that person is actively listed as a customer of the pharmacy and will not raise suspicion."

Pharmacies like CVS and Happy Harry's (a subsidiary of Walgreens) take certain precautions to prevent such identity theft, including checking ID's before filling prescriptions and reminding customers to be careful with their receipts and copies of prescriptions.

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