Healthcare Records

Recently one of the largest healthcare providers in the US, Anthem, was reported as being hacked, giving the hackers access to health records and personal information of an estimated 80 million people. We become accustomed to the problems stemming from stolen personal data in the financial world and have learned to deal with it via credit reports and monitoring. Since we can see what’s contained in our credit report we have an opportunity to address suspicious activity and false information.

This isn’t the case with our health records. It’s incredibly hard to obtain our own healthcare data so if it’s misused we’ll probably never know. My concern is if the misuse leads to something being added to my health records that is factored into diagnosing me later. Since I don’t get to see my health records I don’t get the chance to dispute misinformation that could lead to an improper diagnosis or treatment path in the future.