For fiscal year 2014, the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control program recovered $3.3 billion in taxpayer dollars to the Medicare Trust Fund.
Since the program was created in 1997, the program has recovered more than $27.8 million from people trying to defraud health programs.
For every dollar the federal government spent on investigations during the past three years, it has recovered $7.70. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the details on March 19.
HHS attempts to prevent healthcare fraud and abuse and works with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate potential fraud through real-time data analysis instead of subpoena and account analyses. The HHS and DOJ program is called Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team.
Investigators work in nine territories: Miami; Los Angeles; Detroit; Houston; Brooklyn, New York; Southern Louisiana; Tampa, Florida; Chicago; and Dallas. Prosecutors have filed charges against defendants who billed Medicare for more than $6.5 billion.
Nearly 70 percent of the defendants pled guilty, while another 9 percent were convicted in jury trials. The average imprisonment was approximately 47 months.
“Eliminating fraud, waste and abuse is a top priority for the Department of Health and Human Services,” HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in a news release. “These impressive recoveries for the American taxpayer demonstrate our continued commitment to this goal and highlight our efforts to prosecute the most egregious instances of healthcare fraud and prevent future fraud and abuse.”
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.