SAN ANTONIO \u2013 An older adult in San Antonio is speaking out after receiving a scam call while hospitalized over Memorial Day weekend.<\/p>\n
Terry O\u2019Neill says she was staying at Methodist Stone Oak Hospital when she received a call on the hospital room phone from someone claiming to be from the admissions department. <\/p>\n
The caller told O\u2019Neill that her Medicare supplement was not up to date and that they needed her personal information to resolve the issue. <\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill, who knew her insurance was in order, didn\u2019t take the bait.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I gave him my peace of mind and wished him bad karma and hung up on him,\u201d O\u2019Neill said.<\/p>\n
After reporting the call to her nurse, O\u2019Neill learned the situation was far from isolated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had talked to the nurse about it, and she said, oh yeah, it happens all the time here,\u201d O\u2019Neill said. \u201cAll the phones ring all day with people trying to scam people with Medicare.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill says what made her most upset was thinking about other patients who may not have been as alert.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt made me angry because I was very lucid. I was on IV fluids, but there are people in there with dementia that just come out of anesthesia on strong doses of pain medication,\u201d O\u2019Neill said.<\/p>\n
Why hospital patients are easy targets<\/p>\n
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) says senior consumers are among the most preyed-upon-groups and that vulnerability can be heightened in a hospital setting. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a form of imposter fraud,\u201d Jason Meza, senior director for the BBB, said. \u201cIt also involving medical ID theft because you\u2019re at your worst. Unfortunately, your guard may be down, and so they think, put those two together and they have a recipe for disaster for medical ID theft.\u201d <\/p>\n
Meza says the tactic isn\u2019t entirely new, but it is emerging.<\/p>\n
How to protect yourself<\/p>\n
Officials advise that patients should never share personal information over the phone with an unexpected caller. <\/p>\n
If there is a question about insurance or a bank account, patients should hang up and call the institution directly using a verified number.<\/p>\n
Caller ID also cannot always be trusted, as scammers can spoof legitimate numbers to make a call appear to come from a hospital or other trusted organization.<\/p>\n
Methodist Hospital says it takes these concerns seriously and is looking into the specific case involving O\u2019Neill.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe encourage patients to hang up and speak directly with their nurse or another hospital team member, who can help verify whether a request is legitimate,\u201d a spokesperson with the hospital told KSAT. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 An older adult in San Antonio is speaking out after receiving a scam call while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[145441,82,84,83,28134,9614],"class_list":["post-417486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-bbb","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-scams","tag-stone-oak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}