Administrative Ethics Paper

Every year the amount of people that suffer from identity fraud is at astonishing numbers.
In 2013 alone there were 13.1 million that fell victim to this illegal act. A report at the end of each year is produced by Javelin Strategy & Research (Ellis). These victims are not only falling victim to credit card and social security theft, but also health care fraud. In 2013 alone 44% of people that were victimized by identity theft were victims specifically of health care fraud
(McNeal).
The Target and Niemen Marcus credit card hackers took people by storm in the fall of
2013. It was easy for these people to deal with such fraud because the credit card companies were able to cancel credit cards quickly and with ease. With health care fraud people sometimes don’t see the effects for months sometimes years down the road. A Colorado man received a bill in the mail for a $44,000 surgery that he supposedly had, however this man had never been on an operating table in his entire life. The FBI has been investigating health care fraud for years. In
February 2014 the FBI slapped the health care system on the wrist and issued a notification called the “Health Care Systems and Medical Devices at Risk for Increased Cyber Intrusions for
Financial Gain”, which in the article states that it is warning the healthcare system that the industry is lagging far behind other industries in addressing the basic security flaws (McNeal).
With the healthcare organizations that were surveyed for this article, 90% reported that they had at least one breech within a two year period. The article states that of those breeches had an economic impact in the round about of $2 million. With that being said, just think of the amount of money that multiple breeches. Billions and billions of dollars, that is what. There are several risk factors that are making it easier for hackers to act in the fraudulent behavior. According to the article, Hacking Health Care, the risk factors are as follows:

1) With the law requirement of all medical records to be electronic, meaning this will give

more opportunity for thieves to easily hijack peoples records online due to the growing

numbers of medical equipment being connected to the internet.

2) There is a lag in security measures, compared to retail and finance, due to electronic

records is still relatively new.

3) The black market offers a much higher price offering for medical records because of the

amount of data you can get off of a single person.
If, and it is a matter of when, such security is breached, again, for the US health care industry the result could hit a staggering $5.3 billion hit against the system. Due to the fact that health care records are difficult to manage, according to the article Hacking Health Care, because they contain data that produces billing information to family medical histories. This information will be shared across health care organizations via lap tops, smart phones, tablets, insurance provider apps, laboratories, and so much more. Many places already have a patient portal in place that provides some information and that is readily available on the internet at any time. Even though the health care administrations are amping up what is to be a large step in

medical record and medical technology history we are still bantered by the potential breeches

that could cause issues, we are still going to have the issues of people. People are eventually our

biggest threat to the system. There is a quote in the article by Ralph Echemedta, a so called

“ethical hacker”, that states “We tend to think that because it’s digital, there isn’t an analog to

that digital. That’s the human factor. The biggest issue with health care data getting out there is

from the human beings who work within health care. It’s an insider issue and oftentimes the

insider doesn’t realize that they’ve been hacked.” The fact that the breeches

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