What Goes into Combating Healthcare Fraud

By Claire Thayer, April 27, 2017 According to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, most health care fraud is committed by organized crime groups and a very small minority of dishonest health care provider. The NHCAA tells us that the most common types of fraud include: ·         Billing for services that were never rendered-either by using genuine patient information, sometimes obtained through identity theft, to fabricate entire claims or by padding claims with charges for procedures or services that did not take place. ·         Billing for more expensive services or procedures than were actually provided or performed, commonly known as "upcoding"-i.e., falsely billing for a higher-priced treatment than was actually provided (which often requires the accompanying "inflation" of the patient's diagnosis code to a more serious condition consistent with the false procedure code). ·         Performing medically unnecessary services solely for the purpose of generating insurance payments. ·         Misrepresenting non-covered treatments as medically necessary covered treatments for purposes of obtaining insurance payments-widely seen in cosmetic-surgery schemes, in which non-covered cosmetic procedures such as "nose jobs" are billed to patients' insurers as deviated-septum repairs. ·         Falsifying a patient's diagnosis to justify tests, surgeries or other procedures that aren't medically necessary. ·         Unbundling - billing each step of a procedure as if it were a separate procedure. ·         Billing a patient more than the co-pay amount for services that were prepaid or paid in full by the benefit plan under the terms of a managed care contract. ·         Accepting kickbacks for patient referrals. ·         Waiving patient co-pays or deductibles for medical or dental care and over-billing the insurance carrier or benefit plan (insurers often set the policy with regard to the waiver of co-pays through its provider contracting process; while, under Medicare, routinely waiving co-pays is prohibited and may only be waived due to "financial hardship"). While the U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, CMS and other government entities are busy identifying and tracking down fraud schemes, Deloitte research points out that an emerging area of interest in health care fraud and abuse enforcement is that of relationship scrutiny. This weeks’ edition of the MCOL Infographic, co-sponsored by LexisNexis, highlights some of the costs associated with fighting healthcare fraud: (Click to View Full Size Image) (Click to View Full Size Image) MCOL’s weekly infoGraphoid is a benefit for MCOL Basic members and released each Wednesday as part of the MCOL Daily Factoid e-newsletter distribution service – find out more here.