"Health & Medical News"

When physicians look to protect their patients from medical identity theft, they may want to start by examining their office staff.

That’s because, while patients may try to use another person’s identity fraudulently to receive medical care, many thefts happen when a hospital, clinic or practice employee sells patient information to organized crime or gang leaders, experts said. Then the information is used to conduct fake billing or obtain goods such as wheelchairs and prescription drugs to sell on the black market, said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit research and consumer education organization.

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Physicians frequently miss the connection between their patients’ symptoms and some well-known side effects of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, according to a new study based on reports from 650 patients.

When patients taking statins complained to their doctors about muscle weakness or pain, cognitive problems such as memory loss and other symptoms, physicians dismissed the possibility of adverse drug reactions nearly a third of the time, researchers concluded.

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