Stay aware and stay safe from healthcare scams

LMH Health is issuing an alert that local community members have received phone calls appearing to come from the health system asking for personal and insurance information. These calls are not from LMH but from scammers using technology to impersonate healthcare providers.

LMH Health Chief Information Officer Michael Williams said that LMH communicates with patients through a variety of methods, including phone calls, texts and email, but it’s good to be cautious. If you receive a call from LMH Health that doesn’t sound quite right, hang up and call the clinic directly.

“People can mask their caller ID and it isn’t hard to make it look as if a phone call is coming from LMH Health,” he said. “Our teams will verify your name and date of birth, and we should know enough detail that the call isn’t coming from out of the woods. You should also be able to ask questions of us too.”

Williams explained that patients may also receive calls from Assistency, an agency LMH Health partners with for patients to pay their bills, get answers to billing questions and make payment arrangements.

“Assistency reaches out by phone to patients who have any bills, whether they’re current or overdue,” he said. “You should be able to question them and verify they have the right bill. They should be able to verify the dates you were seen.”

Emails patients receive from LMH Health come from an email address that ends in LMH.org and include a link toward the end to opt-out or remove yourself from future email correspondence. Hover over any links in the body of the email to inspect what web address you’ll be sent to. If it looks fishy, err on the side of caution.

“Look closely, as bad actors will use email addresses that look similar to trick you. Make sure it’s from lmh.org instead of lnh.org,” Williams said. “Does the hyperlink look like the expected website domain? If it feels too good to be true, it probably is.”