Are Healthcare Deceptions and Abuse Amounts on the Decline?

However healthcare fraud sustains to be the number one kind of fraud, it could be 23.2%lower by the end of the year compared to the year 2015.

If trends continue, the year of 2016 is looking set to have the lowest sort of federal prosecutions for healthcare fraud since the year 1998, in accordance to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

TRAC, which is a research agency at the institution of Syracuse University, recently released a report relating to the healthcare fraud trends utilizing information from the Justice Department for its findings.

For the first 6 months of this year, the government reported 239 latest healthcare deception prosecutions. In the year 2015, there were a total of 622 prosecutions, in accordance to TRAC data. If this trend sustains, there will be a total of 478 prosecutions by the end of the year 2016. This would mean that the year 2016 would have 23.2% less healthcare prosecutions than the year 2015.

Furthermore, prosecutions over the last year are lower than they were a decade ago. Healthcare fraud prosecutions are presently decreased by 9.5% from the year of 2006 levels.

Information from TRAC also reviewed that there was an extreme spike in prosecutions in the year 2011, when 1,235 healthcare deception cases took place. The following year, the number dipped back down to approximately 700 cases.

In accordance to The Crime Report, the Justice Department officials stated that the increase in the year 2011 was parallel with what they were observing when searching at healthcare deception broadly. That year, the Justice Department reported few huge busts, as well as various cases including fraud in the private sector. For instance, in the month of February 2011, the Justice Department prosecuted 111 people.

Doctors, nurses and executives were entire accused and blamed for falsely billing Medicare more than $225 million. It was the Medicare Fraud Task Force’s greatest take-down at that period.

The Fiscal Times told that the large increase was caused greatly by a spike in cases in Puerto Rico, where prosecutors charged 548 defendants with health care deception.

For the year 2016 so far, HHS has been responsible for inquiring 49.4%of healthcare fraud prosecutions, while the FBI has inquired 31.8%. The Defense Department managed 3.3 prosecutions, while the Drug Enforcement Agency managed 2.5.

In accordance to TRAC, healthcare fraud presently ranks as the number 1 leading type of deception charge. Mail fraud and conspiracy is presently in 2^nd place, while False claims regarding to the health care matters has taken the 3^rd-place spot. To put things in the whole view, aggravated identity theft is presently the 9^th leading type of charge.