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Legal aspects

“Identity Theft and Medical Identity Theft in a Psychiatric Practice”

For each person described in the following scenario, determine if the situation they are involved in is identity theft, medical identity theft, or neither.
Dr. Morehouse is a psychiatrist who employs Daniel as his billing clerk, Laura as his coder, and Kim as his medical assistant. He contracts with Cheryl for janitorial services. As part of his arrangement with Cheryl, she provides him with discarded patient information from other  facilities where she works. He then uses the information to submit claims for psychiatric services. Meanwhile, Daniel takes patient account payment by credit card over the phone and uses the credit card numbers and patient information to make online purchases. Laura’s unemployed twin sister needs to go to urgent care for treatment with bronchitis. Since she cannot afford the urgent care visit, Laura gives her sister her insurance card so she can get treatment. Kim is a recent hire and still trying to get comfortable with the EHR. Today, while she was entering patient information, she accidently altered the blood type for all patients.