Medicaid Claims And Health Care Fraud: As The Data Flows, New Cracks Emerge

July 16, 2014  |  The Insider: White Collar Defense and Securities Enforcement

As we noted in two of our prior posts in the Insider blog, the government has long touted its ability to rely upon data mining as a means of detecting fraud in the federal health care system, and has initiated a host of investigations and prosecutions based on its analysis of claims data from the Medicare and Medicaid programs.  Yet any approach that relies on data mining rests on a fragile foundation, because the quality of the information upon which the government relies has often been in doubt.  As we explained in the first of our two prior posts on this topic, an HHS Regional Inspector General testified in June 2012 that much of the data used to identify overpayments and fraud is not “current, available, complete, [or] accurate.”  Subsequently, in a post from November 2012, we described the concerns that two United States Senators raised regarding the effectiveness of the “Fraud Prevention System Program” (“FPS”), which is intended to use “predictive analysis” to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in the Medicare program. [...]

Read Full Blog Post Here