Best Results Organizing

Paper Doll‘s best friend called the other day, mopey and chagrined. I could year her planting a “Wow-I-Coulda-Had-A-V8!” slap on her forehead:

Of course, as a friend, I offered all possible succor. She had plenty of reasons to have been distracted. Her eldest daughter, just back from a semester abroad, was ill with a stomach bug. The younger one was, as noted, on the way to the doctor. My friend had been up late the prior night helping her elder son with schoolwork. And normally, had she not been doctor-bound, she wouldn’t have even been taking time off from work. (And of course, would the mother of the bride really have wanted my dear friend carting in a germ factory?)

Yes, yes, my otherwise practically-perfect friend agreed, “but I’d forgotten the wedding altogether. I thought it was TODAY (Saturday) not yesterday (Friday).” She’d even arranged with the mother of the bride to bring the kids along, and convinced her sons they’d have fun. All along, she’d been thinking “Saturday”.

Ouch. As loving a friend as I am, the professional organizer side got the better of me. What had she done, I asked, to try take note of, and then later, to remember the wedding date?

“I put the wedding invitation up on the refrigerator door!”

Oy. Well, no wonder. Just as socks mysteriously disappear in the dryer, anything remotely important posted on the front of the fridge becomes instantly invisible, like Wonder Woman’s plane, until the day after it is actually needed. It’s a law of physics. (Trust me. Would Paper Doll lie to you?) Putting something on the fridge to remind you to take care of it is only marginally better than asking your puppy to remind you to put the casserole in the oven. Well intended and charming, but not exactly efficient.

A wedding invitation, like a term paper assignment, or any other “do this” piece of paper doesn’t represent just one task, but a series of tasks. When assigned a term paper, a student must brainstorm a topic, develop a bibliography, conduct research, create an outline, write a rough draft, and edit the paper. Indeed, the early realization of what tasks a piece of paper represents, and therefore comprehending the difference between tasks and projects, is a major key to time/task and paper management.

The problem, whether with fourth graders or so-called adults, is that too many of us put the reminder (assignment, invitation, etc.) somewhere visible in expectation it will tell us what we have to do…as if completing an assignment or attending a wedding (or preparing taxes, or going grocery shopping, or buying a house or planning for retirement) were one step on a To Do list.

Upon receiving the invitation, my pal had (at least) the following series of tasks to complete:

1. Check her availability against her other already scheduled activities (i.e., check a calendar, detect conflicts, hope the calendar was accurate)
2. RSVP to the wedding (i.e., mark the number attending, seal the envelope and actually remember to mail it!)
3. Schedule the wedding on her calendar to prevent conflicts later on
4. Find out at which stores the happy couple registered
5. Purchase the gift and arrange for delivery (by the store, or by herself, in which case she needed to arrange for a safe place to store the gift and enable herself to remember to bring it to the ceremony or reception)
6. Arrange for childcare (in this case, my friend’s children were also invited, but assuredly sick kids would not have been the most welcome, or most obliging, of guests)
7. Select an outfit and ensure that the elements were clean, pressed and ready to wear
8. Plan time to complete all other tasks that would have gotten her to the wedding on time, hygienic and well-clothed
9. Go to the wedding

Can anyone really imagine that posting a paper wedding invitation behind a refrigerator magnet amid the children’s art and T-ball schedule and pizza delivery phone numbers would get all those tasks completed?

Paper Doll is no Superwoman (nor Wonder Woman, though things on my fridge do become invisible, too), even without kids. Plus, people expect near-perfection from professional organizers (just as they think bankers never mis-balance a checkbook and English teachers never say “further” when they should say “farther”). Thus, I need to have a carefully crafted system to make sure the papers in my life actually prompt me to perform the required tasks.

In fact, we ALL have to have a system, and the right system for Paper Doll might not be the right system for you. You’ve all heard me sing the praises of using a tickler file. Heck, this very page has a link to the little e-book I wrote to help people successfully use tickler files to keep things (like remembering to actually go to a wedding on the right day) from falling through the cracks.

But, of course, successfully using a tickler file does require that you are in the vicinity of your tickler file every day, and that you open it, preferably at least once per day. A To Do list demands the same sort of bare minimum effort on the part of the user.

A Post-It Note across the car’s ignition might remind you to get out of the car and go back inside for the cupcakes you’re taking to the bake sale because you’ll perform the task BEFORE putting the key in the ignition. However, the same ritual won’t remind you to fill the gas tank, which you can’t do until after starting the vehicle, because three seconds after you remove the note and insert your key in the ignition, your brain will have moved on to other tasks.

Entropy: 1; You: Nil.

Some people don’t check their voicemail (or even use their phones) or their email (or even turn on their computers) every single day, so electronic reminders won’t work for that subset of the population. They’re often the ones who write notes to themselves, leaving floozies (Post-Its and scribbled backs of envelopes) piled on the desk or taped to the bathroom mirror, or yes, affixed by magnetism to the refrigerator door…which they will then proceed to ignore, like parsley or wallpaper, until just after the notes might have done some good.

You need a system that will jump up and beat you around the head until you are 100% cognizant of what you’re supposed to remember, know and do.

In the coming weeks, we’re going to review tangible systems (like calendars and tickler files), audio options, digital reminders and a other nifty options to minimize the effects of forgetfulness. As for ditching the guilt about forgetting, just call your best friend. She loves you anyway.

Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Doctor: Then stop doing it.

Note to Paper Doll readers: Due to character limitations on posts, this is actually Part 2 of an extended post. To read the introduction about why medical identity theft is so dangerous, and to link to videos and anecdotes so you take this as seriously as Paper Doll does, be sure to CLICK HERE.

Now, to be sure you’re not one of the 250,000 annual victims of medical identity theft:

1) Protect Your Security…Your SOCIAL SECURITY

Grab your wallet and pull out your health insurance card or Medicare/Medicaid card. If your insurance company or state government-provided insurance, or Medicare or Medicaid, is still using your Social Security number as your insurance identification number, your medical identity is as easy to purloin as your wallet can be plucked out of your purse or pocket.

Just as you shouldn’t carry your Social Security card, if you can’t persuade your insurance company to change your identification number (which more and more companies are doing, at the behest of state governments), DO NOT CARRY your card with you unless absolutely necessary.

Instead, photocopy the front and back of your card, but use a Sharpie to blacken the last four digits. In a non-emergency situation, you can give the last four digits to the medical offices yourself; in cases of emergency, you can be prepared by writing the name and number for your emergency contact on the photocopy, and your emergency contact can provide those last four digits to a medical provider.

2) Request copies of your medical records, insurance claims and credit reports.

First, find out what medical payments your insurance company has made for your (or your dependents’) medical care. Log into your health insurance company account and retrieve past medical billing records and EOBs (explanation of benefits). If your company does not allow digital access, you may have to call or write a certified letter to request copies of your documentation. Even if you haven’t seen a doctor recently, note this task on your calendar once per year so that you can be certain your insurance company is not providing benefits to an “alternate you” at an alternate address.

Next, contact any of your actual doctors and health care professionals for records you haven’t saved during the year, as well as any previously unknown doctors who claim to have treated you, and request copies of your medical records, as allowed under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). By law, they are allowed to charge you a nominal fee for the cost of photocopies and their staff’s time, but most physicians are willing to waive this if they are given ample time to collect the data. Hard copies of X-rays can be more pricey, and unwieldy, so you may request them to be sent digitally. (Click here for state protections, in addition to HIPAA.)

[It’s unlikely that a physician’s office would refuse to help you unless he or she (or the office staff) were complicit in some kind of fraud. If your doctor refuses you access to your own medical records, file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at 1-800-368-1019 or follow their online instructions.]

If you read and followed the advice in the prior posts in this series, you’ve already accessed free copies of your credit reports from the main credit reporting agencies. When reviewing your financial records, make sure there are no liens or reports of medical debts in for services or locations unrelated to you.

Perhaps most importantly, contact the MIB. (No, not the Men In Black, though alien security services might be less scary than knowing some central organization knows more about you than your mother or spouse!) Just as the major credit bureaus keep copies of your financial records, health insurance companies maintain and share your medical history – at a central repository called the MIB (Medical Information Bureau). The MIB exists to help insurance companies detect and eliminate fraud on insurance applications; for example, if there’s a discrepancy between your report of no history of cancer or high blood pressure and a previous notation about such things in your record, the MIB should catch it.

Your MIB report might include information regarding blood pressure, diabetes, obesity or ongoing reproductive issues, but also data on activities your insurance companies have found out about, anything from smoking to bungee jumping. In some cases, your MIB report can contain data regarding drug-related criminal activity and a bad driving record, depending on the depth of reportage. (So yes, the MIB is scary, but also useful, a lot like the Men in Black.)

Just as your credit report from one of the credit bureaus can make or break your chance of getting a good interest rate on a credit card, mortgage or car loan, your MIB feel can influence the cost of any health insurance premium, or even block whether you can obtain insurance at all! Since the Fair Credit Reporting Act guarantees you the right to a free copy of your report, call 866-692-6901 to order your report (and, if necessary, to dispute any errors found therein.)

3) Review your records as if your life depended on it—because it does!

Create small blocks of time in your schedule to tackle this project so that you don’t become overwhelmed. Sit down with your medical records, insurance claims and notes on lab reports to make sure the dates, locations and maladies track properly, and be on the lookout for unusual entries. If you haven’t left the State of California in two years and haven’t seen any physicians but your regular doctor, but there’s an emergency room notation from nine months ago in Brooklyn, that’s an obvious red flag. Also check for variations on the spelling of your name, as those can provide hints to fraudulent claims (or, of course, sloppy physician handwriting).

Generally, search the documentation for services (visits, lab tests, consultations, etc.) never rendered to you (or your dependents). Watch for mistaken or otherwise inaccurate diagnoses, as well as contact information or address changes that don’t reflect anywhere you (or your dependents) have ever resided (or stayed, if there’s a chance you used medical assistance while traveling) or home/work/cellular numbers you’ve ever used.

In addition to medical information, take note of financial information, such as notes regarding payment of co-pays and odd records regarding items in dispute or delayed collections.

Finally, be sure to note what disclosures of “your” medical history have been made to other government or social service agencies or health providers. Your MIB report can help with this, as it includes a list of companies that have reported information about your medical identity to the MIB during the 12 months prior to your request. (One note: records are purged after seven years. If you haven’t applied/reapplied for insurance in the past seven years, you may not have an MIB report.)

4) Dispute any misinformation.

This may mean making phone calls, personal visits or even certified letters, but armed with your own documentation, dispute any and all incorrect data with your health provider(s), your insurance carrier, and, if necessary, the credit bureaus. Request, or if necessary, demand investigation of the questionable material and, once investigated, removal from your records. Under HIPAA, a medical provider or insurance company that corrects an error is legally obligated to contact each party to whom it has previously released your information (including pharmacies, labs, insurance companies, etc.) to attempt to correct and revise their error.

Copies of all disputes should be in writing. If you have a telephone conversation, transcribe it (by taking notes during the call), and send follow-up copies to the person with whom you’ve been chatting to reiterate what each of you has said, done and/or agreed to do.

5) Call a Cop! Call the Feds!

Seriously. If you find that you are a victim of medical identity theft, file a police report. Do this even if the fraud didn’t actually cost you money, even if you don’t currently have insurance, even if “hate making a fuss”. Someone who has stolen your medical identity would have no compunction regarding stealing your financial identity or legal identity. Beyond this, someone willing to purloin your identity might also be guilty of drug-seeking and related crimes, so completing a police report might be a prophylactic against the police mistaking the bad guy impersonating you for the real you.

You can also call the Federal Trade Commission to file a medical identity theft complaint. The FTC has a toll-free Identity Theft Hotline at 1-877-IDTHEFT (438-4338) and you can file a complaint online, as well.

Also, if you have been the victim of Medicare/Medicaid fraud, call 1-800-HHS-TIPS (1-800-447-8477) or report the fraud online.

6) Get Organized!

The best way to tell whether other people’s records are flawed is to compare them with your own carefully-kept records. Your family filing system should include a section for medical, dental and vision care records, including the physicians you’ve seen, dates of treatment or tests, test results, diagnoses and general treatment plans.

Preserve your financial identity to safeguard your lifestyle; preserve your medical identity to save your life.

Finally, as my dear Paper Mommy would say, zay gezunt!

Note to Paper Doll’s readers:  Due to space/character limitations (including HTML code for links), this post will be split over two entries, one on Sunday and one in my regular space on Tuesday.  Please consider this a sneak preview warning, like the scary film they show on the first day of Driver’s Ed before they actually let you behind the wheel.

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Previously, we’ve discussed the importance of organizing your records and yourself to prevent and recover from financial identity theft.  But another theft, that of your medical identity, can be even more dangerous. While financial identity theft can cost you money (and your credit history), time (spent correcting the trouble) and even your freedom (in case your doppelganger commits a crime), medical identity theft can cost you your life.  Does that sound overly melodramatic?  It’s not.  

Imagine two scenarios: 

In the first, someone who perpetrates insurance fraud and poses as you gets diagnosed with high blood pressure, H.I.V., migraines or any of a variety of health conditions.  He pays the required co-pay, fills out a change of address form, and you never notice (or even receive) the explanation of benefits, and go on about your merry way.  Years later, you apply for medical and life insurance and the company flags “your” prior diagnosis.  The insurance company may sell you the health and life insurance policies, but at a MUCH higher premium rate, plus they may refuse to cover you for what they deem a pre-existing condition.  You may not have had high blood pressure before, but you sure do now!

In the second scenario, imagine continuing on with the same insurance policy you’ve had all along, never realizing anything is amiss.  Then you find yourself ill with multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s Disease or cancer, and begin the best treatment available, only to find that the insurance company is refusing to cover the costs because “you” have already reached your lifetime limit of benefits.  That lifetime limit may have been one million dollars, but if your thief’s illness (years prior) was serious enough and the stolen coverage went undetected by you, your life could now be in peril.  While your health and energy are at their weakest, you will have to fight to regain your medical identity; simultaneously, you’ll be unlikely to find any insurance company willing to take you on, as you now (however illegitimately) have a pre-existing condition.

Scared enough to take this seriously?  According to the World Privacy Foundation, over 250,000 Americans are victimized by medical identity theft each year.  Medical identity theft is widespread and serious, but just as with financial identity theft, there are precautions you can take.  In the follow-up post in our regular space this Tuesday (6/3/08), we’ll talk about how to safeguard your Social Security number, get the MIB (no, not the Men in Black) involved and using the power of a loud voice (to call the cops, involve the Feds and dispute fraud and mistakes.

Meet you back here on Tuesday morning…until then, review some cautionary anecdotes, watch these two YouTube videos here and (especially) here and stay healthy!

Identity theft is not merely inconvenient, and identity thieves do not just steal the time it takes for you to get your finances back in order. While the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse reports that the average victim of identity theft spends 175+ hours recovering losses and restoring his or her good name, lost time is actually the least of your worries.

Millions of Americans are victimized by identity theft each year. Although the actual number of victims has decreased slightly in recent years (from 10.1 million in 2003 and 9.3 million in 2005 to 8.4 million in 2007), the average fraud per person rose from $5,249 in 2003 to $6,383 in 2006. In other words, while the chance of it being you has decreased, the impact if you are the victim has increased!

In most situations, thieves make a few purchases using a purloined credit card number and then move on to the next victim. Keeping organized records and quickly alerting the credit card company means you will suffer minimal financial loss. However, in the most dangerous cases, identity thieves CREATE AN ALTERNATE VERSION OF “YOU”—causing untold damage. If someone steals your identity and then uses it to procure services at a hospital (about which we’ll chat next week), depending on the thief’s diagnoses, it could prevent you from getting health or life insurance later on in life. These bad guys don’t merely ruin your credit rating and keep you from getting insurance, passports and jobs. You could even get arrested if someone commits a felony using your forged identity.

Almost worse than thinking about the potential pitfalls of becoming a victim of identity theft, because of the instances of major corporations being hacked or scammed, breaching our personal data is happening more often (226 million cases at recent count) regardless of our own preventative measures.

Organization is still your best shot at guarding against identity theft, but because upwards of 2.4 million Americans have been left open to identity theft through computer hackers of major companies and universities, defensive moves aren’t enough. Organization is also your key move after the criminals strike, so use these tips as a checklist to towards recovery of your good name.

1) CONTACT THE AUTHORITIES

• CALL one of the three CREDIT REPORTING AGENCIES to issue a 90-DAY FRAUD ALERT and get a free copy of your credit report to see how pervasive the problem is. After you receive your report, call the agencies back to request an fraud alert extension to 7 years.

  Equifax	800-525-6285
  Experian	800-397-3742
  TransUnion	800-680-7289

• CALL your CREDITORS. Close all tampered credit card accounts and have them marked as “closed at consumer’s request” and have your accounts replaced. Make sure you aren’t held responsible for fraudulent accounts opened in your name. If your checks are stolen, call your bank AND Telecheck:

• Telecheck

  800-366-2425

• CALL the POLICE. Filling out a detailed crime report allows you to extend your fraud alert from 90 days to 7 years and helps you officially correct records. This is your main insurance against arrest and prosecution if someone steals your identity and commits crimes.

2) PUT EVERYTHING IN WRITING

• Keep a LOG BOOK of every conversation. Every time you call a credit agency, creditor or the police, write down the date and time of the call, the name of the person you talked to, their badge or ID number and their contact information. Note what they promised to do.

• Follow up every call with a CERTIFIED LETTER confirming the details of your conversation. Fill out your lenders’ FRAUD FORMS and send copies of the police report.

• File a COMPLAINT with the Federal Trade Commission.

• Fill out an ID THEFT AFFIDAVIT, available online (and you can find the FTC’s instructions for filling it out here:

  http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/

• Write special needs letters (i.e., to report identity theft on behalf of a deceased relative), check the letter templates at the Identity Theft Resource Center.

3) MAINTAIN EXCELLENT RECORDS

Keep a special section in your filing system for logs of phone calls and copies of your letters, affidavits and fraud forms. Keep copies of anything the agencies, creditors or police send you.

OPEN YOUR MAIL as soon as it arrives and check every bill for accuracy; then organize files for each account, dating back at least a year, to track and verify transactions.

4) REMEMBER THAT THE BEST OFFENSE IS A GOOD DEFENSE

NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION via phone or computer unless you initiate the contact and it is SECURE.

Use the free web site http://AnnualCreditReport.com to check all three of your credit reports every year. Investigate anything odd.

• DON’T CARRY your Social Security Card in your wallet. Protect your Social Security Number as if it’s worth a million dollars.

• SHRED convenience checks and anything containing personal account information before discarding.

• Call 888-5-OPTOUT to get off mailing lists for pre-approved credit cards so no one can steal the offers from your mailbox and apply for credit in your name.

Keeping organized helps prevent ID theft, alerts you to a crisis sooner and helps you recover your finances, your legal standing and your good name after the fact. Fight back, and be careful out there!

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For more information regarding financial identity theft recovery, check out these excellent resources:

• Federal Trade Commission
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
• Identity Theft Resource Center
• Call For Action (to get media help with your identity recover activities)
• Social Security Administration (if someone steals your SSN number)
• The FTC’s special report for military families dealing with ID theft
• The President’s Task Force on Identity Theft
• Fight Identity Theft blog
• AARP Preventing Identity Theft Seminar
• Internet Crime Complaint Center (in partnership with the FBI)
• U.S. Department of Justice Identity Theft and Fraud Division

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Next week, we’ll be talking about the scariest (in Paper Doll‘s opinion) type of fraud, medical identity theft.  See you then!

Dear Lord:
Lest I continue
My complacent way
Help me to remember that somewhere
Somehow out there
A man died for me today.
As long as there be war
I then must
Ask and answer
Am I worth dying for?