Home Health & Hospice Week

Strike Force areas now number 10.

The feds’ Medicare Strike Force model has proven so successful, it has now expanded to yet another metro area — Newark, New Jersey/Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In addition to the traditional Strike Force focus on healthcare fraud, the new office will also target opioid-related violations. “Fraudulent activity remains a significant threat to federal health care programs’ stability,” HHS Office of Inspector General Deputy IG Gary Cantrell says in a Department of Justice release. “This joint initiative enables us to marshal resources with other law enforcement agencies, resulting in even more impressive investigative outcomes against health care fraud.”

The Newark/Philadelphia unit joins the already existing Medicare Strike Force cities of Miami; Los Angeles; Detroit; Houston; Brooklyn, New York; Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana; Tampa, Florida; Chicago; and Dallas, along with a Corporate Strike Force in Washington, D.C., the DOJ says. The Strike Forces represent a partnership between the DOJ Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Offices, the FBI, and HHS OIG.

Since its inception in March 2007, the prosecutors in the Medicare Fraud Strike Force locations have charged more than 3,700 defendants who collectively have falsely billed the Medicare program for over $14 billion, the DOJ says.