Why does dentist need social security

Guarantee of payment : Some people simply do not pay their bills, and hospitals and healthcare providers often have little recourse if they can't contact you. As the one universal identifier of all Americans, Social Security numbers give healthcare providers the last-ditch means to collect on medical debt.

This doesn't include the unpaid bills to private practice physicians or other forms of non-hospital-based care. It is an enormous problem that only serves to drive up healthcare costs nationwide. If you can't pay your medical bills, it is better for you to make arrangements for payment, health insurance coverage, or to obtain government-sponsored coverage rather than going into debt and getting sent to a debt collector.

Verifying your identity : When you go to the hospital or a healthcare provider, you may be given a patient identifier, which is a number that identifies you within that healthcare system. However, once you leave that system and go to another hospital, you will be given a completely different number. Your Social Security number can be a way for healthcare providers and hospitals to identify you in order to share your records for planning your medical care.

As a consumer, it is not unreasonable for you to be worried about sharing your Social Security number with anyone, even a trusted family doctor. Each year, over two million people are victims of medical identity fraud in the U. While your healthcare provider may be permitted to see you as a patient even if you refuse to provide your social security number, most hospitals and diagnostic facilities require that you provide it unless you are in need of emergency medical care.

If you are uncomfortable providing your social security number, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself from identity theft :. Under the law, doctors cannot refuse to treat a person for ethnic, racial, or religious reasons.

Nor can a doctor discriminate based on a person's sex or sexual orientation. Outside of these protected areas, providers and hospitals are not required to accept a patient, and they are permitted to have policies that decrease the chances that a patient will not pay their medical bill.

Sign up for our Health Tip of the Day newsletter, and receive daily tips that will help you live your healthiest life. The Economic Consequences of Hospital Admissions. Am Econ Rev. In , there were data breaches involving Social Security numbers, representing more than half of the total reported number of breaches. Many of these breaches occurred in the health care industry, where medical records enjoy a long shelf life.

The health care industry, with hospitals leading the way, reported that Alarmingly, about half of all health care organizations had little or no confidence that they could detect the loss or theft of patient data, and the majority lack the budget to secure their data , according to a annual study on health care data privacy and security by the Ponemon Institute, a security research and consulting organization.

The more your number is out there, the greater the risk of identity theft. That is being corrected, however: New cards with randomly assigned Medicare numbers are in the process of being issued to replace the ones that bear Social Security numbers. Part of the overall problem is that Social Security numbers were never designed to be used as identity authenticators. This makes SSNs much sought-after commodities on the black market.

And sensitive information like Social Security numbers is taken in more than 70 percent of hospital data breaches, according to a recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Mendelsohn, senior policy counsel for Consumer Reports. If you use Medicare, you have to share your MBI with healthcare providers. According to Medicare , you need to protect the new card as you would a credit card, giving the number only "to doctors, pharmacists, other healthcare providers, your insurer, or people you trust to work with Medicare on your behalf.

After that, there are a few limited exceptions for use of the older Medicare cards. In some cases, your healthcare provider may say they need your Social Security number simply because they have a field in their computerized medical records that must be filled in. The solution? Ask them to use zeros. Quiz the staff on their security practices and repeat your concerns to the doctor if you still don't get satisfaction.