FTC Delays Implementation of Red Flag Rules on Identity Theft Programs until

August 1, 2009

 The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continues to assert that physicians who regularly bill their patients (including co-payments and coinsurance) are considered creditors and so must develop and implement written identity theft prevention and detection programs for their practices by May 1, 2009, in order to be in compliance with the FTC’s Red Flags (Rule).

However, the implementation of this mandate has now been delayed until August 1, 2009.

The American Medical Association continues to disagree with the FTC’s broad interpretation of the term “creditor.”  They are continuing their efforts to delay the now delayed compliance deadline and to get FTC to re-publish the Rule so that medicine will have an opportunity to explain why this Rule is not applicable to physicians. 

In the interim, the AMA has developed guidance material to help physicians comply with the Red Flags Rule, which can be accessed on the AMA website at:

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/no-index/physician-resources/red-flags-rule.shtml

The Adobe pdf file information is available to all. However, the Word version of the compliance plan is for AMA members only.