AMA Should comply

The AMA Should Comply with Red Flags Rules.

As the Federal Trade Commission has yet again delayed the enforcement of the Red Flag rules, and the American Medical Association positions itself to avoid compliance, a question must be asked: How can any group argue against requiring a medical practice to verify a new patient’s identity to protect innocent Americans?

It seems fairly simple, responsible and reasonable for the government to expect any business—including medical practices–in the United States to employ measures protecting their patients, or customers from identity theft. The AMA disagrees with this fact. They have filed suit against the FTC over the implementation of the “red flags” rule. The AMA’s rationale behind this suit is that the government is grouping medical practices with financial institutions, and furthermore threatens the trust in the doctor patient relationship.

Does the AMA have an ulterior motive? Are they protecting their patients best interest? Is it all about doctor patient trust, or is it about not spending the time or money to protect us from medical identity theft? The fact of the matter is last year there were more than 275,000 cases of medical ID theft which is double the previous year. On average the cost of medical fraud is $12,100 compared to $4,841 for other instances. Furthermore, medical fraud and ID theft costs on average $2,228 to resolve, or six times more than other types of identity frauds. Most importantly, medical ID theft could seriously complicate your files and treatment, and result in death.

So why not develop a compliance plan? The AMA is claiming that checking a patient’s identity will violate the doctor patient relationship. On the surface it may seem like a fair argument, but what does the AMA define the doctor-patient relationship as? According to the AMA policy H-275.937 physician patient relations are defined as a, “Commitment of the physician to be an advocate for the patient and for what is best for the patient, without regard to the physician’s personal interests.” Wouldn’t implementing ID verification and becoming red flags compliant be in the patient’s best interest?
Furthermore, the AMA would consider “best practice” procedures as following the ethical standard at times and not always the law. According to their website, “the ethical standard typically goes beyond what the law requires…The law, which sometimes is slow to change, has not always kept pace with some of the recent fundamental changes in the delivery of health care…Therefore, taking the ethical highroad may be both in the best interest of a physician’s patient and the best risk management strategy.”

Unfortunately, the AMA is saying one thing and doing another. They claim that doctors should put their patients interests ahead of their own, and that they should take the ethical high road over the law. In this situation they are doing neither of those two things, and they are ultimately putting their patients security and lives at risk, so that they can save some time and money. Something must be done about this, and congress has the responsibility to act, and act quickly to protect the American people.

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