“Health and Human Services’ watchdog is expected to recover $1.51 billion in taxpayer funding from October 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020, a new report finds.”
“But that was down severely from the prior six-month period where the watchdog collected $5.04 billion from April to September 2019.”
“The agency’s Office of the Inspector General released its semiannual report to Congress on Monday. The watchdog detailed its efforts to tackle fraud and how it is handling fraud related to COVID-19.”
“Overall, OIG’s investigative work led to $1.51 billion in expected investigative recoveries alongside 443 criminal actions during the six-month period…”
“OIG also launched a series of enforcement actions to crack down on scammers at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“’By mid-March, OIG had developed a dedicated system to report fraud schemes for COVID-19, issued a special fraud alert on COVID-19 to protect Medicare beneficiaries from identity theft, issued a policy statement to waive cost-sharing requirements for telehealth services, and initiated an assessment of CDC’s provision of COVID-19 test kits and its oversight of laboratory testing,’ the report found.” Read the full article here.
Source: OIG finds $1.51B in savings from fraud, details efforts to combat COVID-19 scammers – By Robert King, June 1, 2020. FierceHealthcare.
