Scammers Call PeaceHealth Patients

Peace­Health has received reports of recent phone scams – or “vish­ing” scams – impact­ing patients in the What­com, Skag­it and San Juan areas.

Scam­mers are pre­tend­ing to be from Peace­Health or oth­er health agen­cies and attempt­ing to steal per­son­al infor­ma­tion or pri­vate health details over the phone.

The scam­mers may already have some per­son­al infor­ma­tion they col­lect­ed through oth­er sources to appear legit­i­mate. Anoth­er tac­tic the scam­mers may use is to manip­u­late the caller ID to appear that the call is com­ing from PeaceHealth.

It’s impor­tant to know that Peace­Health would nev­er pres­sure patients to pro­vide per­son­al infor­ma­tion. If you receive a sus­pi­cious call, hang up imme­di­ate­ly and call your provider’s office direct­ly to ver­i­fy if there is a legit­i­mate need for any information.

Oth­er sug­ges­tions to keep you safe:

• Con­sid­er let­ting unex­pect­ed calls or num­bers you don’t rec­og­nize go to voicemail.
• Do not engage the scam­mer or call them back if you receive a sus­pi­cious voicemail.
• Nev­er give per­son­al or finan­cial data, such as your Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber or cred­it card account num­ber, to callers you don’t know. If they say they have the infor­ma­tion and just need you to con­firm it, that’s a trick.
• If you feel threat­ened, call the police.

You’re encour­aged to report any vish­ing or phone scam activ­i­ty to the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion. Read more infor­ma­tion from the FTC on how to rec­og­nize phone scams.

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