Earlier this week, The Dominion Post received a call from a local woman about a phone scam involving callers posing as representatives of WVU Medicine.
The caller said the phone number on the caller ID was 304-598-4000 — a main line for J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital.
The alleged scammer identified himself as Mark Edison with WVU Medicine and began to ask the woman questions about her personal health — mainly questions about if she had diabetes, she said.
Fortunately, the woman was able to recognize the call as a scam and hung up on the man, but did call the hospital who, she said, confirmed it was not a legitimate call.
The Dominion Post reached out to WVU Medicine for any additional information they might have on this or other scams, as well as what patients can do to protect themselves.
“WVU Medicine takes our responsibility to ensure the confidentiality of our patients’ personal health information very seriously,” said a WVU Medicine spokesperson.
“There appears to be a national uptick in the occurrence of cybersecurity incidents, phishing scams, and social media attacks. We have implemented appropriate internal safeguards to help avoid these types of attacks and scams and have spent considerable time educating our employees on protecting against these events.”
The spokesperson said in addition to health care institutions, there is also an uptick in direct contact with patients to collect personal information through “spoofing” calls — like the one received by the local resident — where the caller appears to call from a phone number associated with a particular business, but actually has no affiliation.
“WVU Medicine recommends that patients be cautious when being asked to provide personal information such as their name, date of birth, social security number, Medicare member number, or any other personal information to unknown individuals,” they said. “We are in constant communication with our patients and invite them to visit their MyWVUChart and our WVU Medicine Facebook Page for further resources.”
The Federal Trade Commission advises you should never give your personal or financial information in response to a request that you didn’t expect. A legitimate business will also give you time to make a decision and won’t pressure you to act immediately.
Anyone who receives what they believe to be a scam call of any kind can report it to the West Virginia Attorney General’s office, a local law enforcement agency, or the Federal Trade Commission.
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