Part B Insider (Multispecialty) Coding Alert
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It's not just your imagination--healthcare fraud busts are way up this year. Data obtained from the government show federal health care fraud prosecutions in the first eight months of 2011 are on pace to rise 85 percent over last year, reports the USA Today newspaper. That's "due in large part to ramped-up enforcement efforts under the Obama administration," the paper points out. Federal officials credit the Medicare Fraud Strike Force program that has recently expanded to include nine cities total. The strike forces operate under the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) initiative. "We're just going to build on this model, and we're going to hold those responsible who are stealing from the government," the Department of Justice's criminal division Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer told USA Today. The statistics, released by the non-partisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, show 903 prosecutions so far this year, the newspaper says. That number is up 71 percent over the last five years.
Part B Insider (Multispecialty) Coding Alert
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