Medical ID Theft Threatens Unsuspecting Victims' Lives

Nov. 21, 2006 — -- Linda Weaver first became aware that her medical information had been stolen when she received a bill for a surgery she never had.

"I found out through my bills that someone had used my medical information for a foot amputation," she said. "I went to the hospital. I said I got two feet, it's not my bill. They said, 'That's your responsibility.'"

Frustrated by the hospital personnel's reluctance to help, Weaver threatened to sue.

"Only then did they show interest," Weaver said. "The hospital dropped the bill, but other bill collections agencies started going after me. The doctor's bills are not being dropped. My insurance company won't pick up any of it because it wasn't me."

"I could never get [those fraudulent charges] off my credit report," Weaver said. "So you just say screw it, your credit's ruined. I've resolved myself to the fact that I'll never get a decent interest rate for anything."

Although her credit was ruined, Weaver was confident that her medical records had been corrected. However, an emergency visit to the hospital for a heart attack proved that was not the case.

"Supposedly my medical record had been purged, but the nurse thought I had diabetes when in fact I don't," she says. "These kind of mistakes could be fatal."

Massachusetts resident Debra Herritt became aware of the fraudulent use of her medical identity when her psychiatrist, Richard Skodnek, was arrested in April 1994.

"I didn't know before I saw him in the paper," Herritt said. "I had no idea what extent [was the fraud] because the insurance company never let me know when they had paid a claim, and we were paying him out of pocket. He double-dipped. Billed me, then the insurance company, for dates he hadn't even seen me."

The problem was more extensive than Herritt thought.

"After I met with a man from the FBI, I found out that he had also billed the insurance company for seeing my children and he had never even met my children," she said.

Since Skodnek's conviction, Herritt has asked her insurance company to remove his psychiatric diagnoses from her children's medical records.

"It was an incredible invasion of our privacy," she said. "My children were not the only children of patients he did that to, that he gave fraudulent diagnoses. I really don't know if the system has changed so that there is more oversight or what they've done."