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“If healthcare providers are complacent to safeguarding personal information, they’ll risk losing substantial revenues and patients as a result of medical identity theft.”The report highlights that last year alone, nearly 1.6 million people had their medical information stolen from healthcare providers. In many of these cases, some victims of medical identity theft have unwittingly paid bills run up by others, or were forced to reimburse their insurers for fraudulent healthcare costs. Accenture estimates that 25 percent of patients impacted by healthcare provider data breaches over the next five years (more than 6 million people) will subsequently become victims of medical identity theft. Furthermore, 16 percent of impacted patients (more than four million people) will be victimized and pay out-of-pocket costs totaling a whopping $56 billion between 2015 and 2019.
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"100% security isn’t a realistic goal, but making breaches more expensive for the attacker doesn’t require perfect security," said Erlin.Erlin adds that healthcare organizations should take notice of these trends and develop their own plans for defense and response. Findings from the study were based on historical security breach data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights to project the number of patients likely to be affected by healthcare provider data breaches up until 2019.