Medical identity theft up 20 percent in the last year

Electronic health records are going to become more and more prevalent as the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services have offered payments to health-care providers to implement EHRS with 'meaningful use': http://www.healthit.gov/policy-researchers-implementers/meaningful-use

But with this new way of managing patient information and records comes likely problems, including medical identity theft. Gigaom reports on a survey that finds that medical identity theft is rising:

"According to a new survey from the Ponemon Institute, an independent group that focuses on privacy and data security, medical identity theft is on the rise: since 2012, the number of people affected by medical identity theft has increased nearly 20 percent. The survey, which was sponsored by the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance and ID Experts, found that a total of about 1.84 million people in the U.S. have been affected."