Dive Brief:
- Researchers have concluded that federal prosecutors filed a record number of healthcare fraud cases during the last fiscal year.
- According to Department of Justice statistics obtained through of Freedom of Information Act request by a nonprofit research group, federal prosecutors pursued 377 new federal healthcare fraud cases in the fiscal year that ended in October. That's up 7.7% from five years ago.
- According to the researchers, Southern Illinois had the most cases filed on a per capita basis, with the feds chasing 10.1 prosecutions per 1 million people, eight times the national average.
Dive Insight:
These numbers don't necessarily suggest that fraud and abuse are rampant in the healthcare industry. Instead, I submit that they show only that authorities like the FBI and HHS are trying to prove that they're tough on healthcare crime. If we really want to catch the "bad guys" it probably makes sense to prosecute fewer cases and dig into them more deeply. My bet is that the wider the net they throw, the more they tax their resources, making it less likely that they'll capture those they seek.