Home Health & Hospice Week

If you think enforcement agencies have been taking it easy during the pandemic, think again.

The HHS Office of Inspector General and its state and federal law enforcement partners “participated in a health care fraud takedown in September 2020,” the OIG notes in a statement. “More than 345 defendants in 51 judicial districts were charged with participating in health care fraud schemes involving more than $6 billion” in losses.

Those indicted included more than 100 doctors, nurses, and other licensed medical professionals, the Department of Justice says in a release.

One of the feds’ biggest focus areas was telehealth, with $4.5 billion connected to the services, the DOJ says. “Since 2016, HHS-OIG has seen a significant increase in ‘telefraud’: scams that leverage aggressive marketing and so-called telehealth services,” the agency says.

Using telemarketing calls, direct mail, and TV and internet ads, scammers order services or items “without any patient interaction or with only a brief telephonic conversation with patients they had never met or seen,” the OIG says in a fact sheet about the takedown. The items and services often weren’t provided or were worthless.

Further, “the misdirection, fake diagnoses, and unneeded tests misled patients and delayed their chance to seek appropriate treatment for medical complaints,” the OIG blasts. Plus, “the proceeds of the fraudulent scheme were allegedly laundered through international shell corporations and foreign banks for the benefit of the defendants.”