Showing posts with label medical fraud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medical fraud. Show all posts
Saturday, August 18, 2018
The Killers and Crooks Of The Medical Industry
The American medical industry makes the Mafia look like boy scouts. These crooks are as deadly as Hitler's Nazis.
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Medical Fraud and How It Can Make You Rich
If you work for a doctor or a hospital you got hired because you are probably female, not too smart, easily bullied, a bitch and immoral and unprincipled Moral and principled people don't last long in the American sick care industry. If you are like most barracudas who work in a doctor's office you are probably a back stabber and that will serve you well in getting filthy fucking rich. CHA CHING!
$$$ Instead of giving your boss a blow job, blow the whistle on him and get a huge reward! $$$
Theft Fraud and Kickbacks: The Rule NOT the Exception in American Healthcare
- The largest SEC whistleblower reward given under the Dodd-Frank program (more than $30 million).
- The largest healthcare fraud settlement ($3 billion - GlaxoSmithKline).
- The second largest healthcare fraud settlement ($2.3 billion - Pfizer Inc.).
- The largest settlement of a healthcare fraud case involving solely kickback allegations ($400 million - DaVita Healthcare Partners).
- The largest amount ever paid by a defense contractor in a qui tam case($325 million - Northrop Grumman).
- Largest settlement ever paid by a medical lab company for a faulty product ($302 million - Quest Diagnostics).
Medical theft and fraud is MASSIVE and so are the whistleblower reward.
1. When you suspect fraud keep your ears open and keep your mouth shut. Remember, you are working in an industry full of very unethical and dangerous sharks
2. Contact a law firm that specializes whistleblower and qui tam law.
3. Don't go to local law enforcement because they may try to implicate you. Rich people are often mobbed up with the locals. HIRE an ATTORNEY who is a specialist in this area of law.
4. Compile and document anything that you find suspicious.
5. Keep a secret diary and date it.
RELATED: MEDICAL BILLING FRAUD ARTICLES:
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Doctors Are The New Banksters
It's well known that American bankers are among the most reviled pieces of trash in America and they have earned that reputation but you probably didn't know that American doctors are far worse.
Disease exploitation better known health care in America is now 20% of the US GDP. To put that into perspective the when you exclude the US the world average for countries is 5% of their annual GDP. When the US had the best health care its percentage of GDP for health care was 5%. One would think that a quadrupling of health care expenditures would make America the the leader in health care but in reality American health care is the absolute worst in the industrialized world with a ranking by the World Health Organization of 38th.
Doctors being lying scum will blame everyone but themselves for the dismal state of American heath care and while a lot of the blame like with the FDA, corporate hospitals and big pharma the biggest scumbag are indeed MDs.
MDs are the pimps who sell the dangerous and over priced drugs to naive patients and they get filthy rich doing it via the kickbacks from the drug companies. Other doctors make a killing taking bribes and kickbacks from medical device companies like Stryker Medical and Johnson & Johnson.
Unlike the banksters who don't directly kill and maim people for profit doctors, fueled by their unquenchable greed, kill at least 1 million Americans each year and maim many more and unlike the banking industry incompetency is very in the medical industry is highly lucrative. Imagine if the medical industry cured diseases instead of exploiting them. If the industry and their whores at the FDA allowed cures the industry would be a mere shadow of what it is today.
Click here and see how the medical industry nets $1 trillion each year and kills 440,000 Americans each year through their medical errors alone. This is proof positive that bad medicine is far more lucrative than good medicine.
Even if the banks were unregulated they could not do the damage to America that doctors and their criminal industry has done.
The remedy for criminal bankers is prison and the remedy for millions of criminals in in the medical industry is also prison.
Disease exploitation better known health care in America is now 20% of the US GDP. To put that into perspective the when you exclude the US the world average for countries is 5% of their annual GDP. When the US had the best health care its percentage of GDP for health care was 5%. One would think that a quadrupling of health care expenditures would make America the the leader in health care but in reality American health care is the absolute worst in the industrialized world with a ranking by the World Health Organization of 38th.
Doctors being lying scum will blame everyone but themselves for the dismal state of American heath care and while a lot of the blame like with the FDA, corporate hospitals and big pharma the biggest scumbag are indeed MDs.
MDs are the pimps who sell the dangerous and over priced drugs to naive patients and they get filthy rich doing it via the kickbacks from the drug companies. Other doctors make a killing taking bribes and kickbacks from medical device companies like Stryker Medical and Johnson & Johnson.
Unlike the banksters who don't directly kill and maim people for profit doctors, fueled by their unquenchable greed, kill at least 1 million Americans each year and maim many more and unlike the banking industry incompetency is very in the medical industry is highly lucrative. Imagine if the medical industry cured diseases instead of exploiting them. If the industry and their whores at the FDA allowed cures the industry would be a mere shadow of what it is today.
Click here and see how the medical industry nets $1 trillion each year and kills 440,000 Americans each year through their medical errors alone. This is proof positive that bad medicine is far more lucrative than good medicine.
Even if the banks were unregulated they could not do the damage to America that doctors and their criminal industry has done.
The remedy for criminal bankers is prison and the remedy for millions of criminals in in the medical industry is also prison.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
More Medical Industry Crime
Spine Implant Company Used Hookers and Strippers as Kickbacks, Case Claims
Last Updated Jun 2, 2011 7:11 PM EDT
Faced with a case in which Blackstone Medical sales reps allegedly provided prostitutes and strippers to doctors who agreed to use its spinal implants, a federal appeals court has ruled that the trial judges underneath them have applied the false claims and anti-kickback statutes too strictly.
The ruling follows a string of at least seven federal court decisions which have required that conspirators expressly acknowledge they are breaking the law when fraudulently applying for reimbursement from the federal government for medical expenses. For all practical purposes, this high technical bar meant that Medicare, insurers and healthcare coverage providers would have to find a written confession in order to demonstrate they were being ripped off. As such, the decisions virtually legalized drug price inflation through fraud and kickbacks.
The case, brought by former Blackstone regional manager Susan Hutcheson, features such spectacular allegations of wrongdoing that it would have left the First Circuit appeals court looking ridiculous if it had agreed with the Massachusetts trial judge's decision to dismiss the case for "failing to state a claim."
Hutcheson alleges that Blackstone paid spine doctors between $1,666 and $8,000 a month to make sure they used Blackstone's implants in their surgeries. Although the payments were officially to recruit surgeons for Blackstone's "medical advisory board," the company expressly linked the payments to sales of its products for the physicians' surgeries, Hutcheson claimed. Doctors who stopped using the devices were admonished by company reps and then dropped from the payment list, Hutcheson claims. All advisory board contracts were signed by BMI presidentMatt Lyons, Hutcheson claims.
The Department of Justice supported the case with an amicus brief, perhaps because it noticed that Hutcheson alleged Blackstone executives destroyed documents when they believed they were under investigation by the feds.
"Shredding documents 24 hours a day"
In the summer of 2006, a Blackstone distributor learned that St. Dominic's hospital in Jackson, Miss., was conducting an internal probe of a doctor who had taken payments from the company. After Blackstone declined to provide documents to St. Dominic's to help them with their inquiry, the hospital contacted the FBI. At that point the executive allegedly told Hutcheson he was "shredding documents 24 hours a day."
The scheme was so thorough -- Hutcheson lists all the doctors allegedly on Blackstone's payroll -- that it became burdensome for sales reps to execute. Each month they had to create a fictitious paper trail of "engagements" with the doctors to justify paying them the stipends, she claims. One rep, sales manager Brian Dukate, allegedly complained to vp Paul Sendro, "I cannot just make things up out of thin air":
Surgeons at a strip club
The scheme reached its tawdry nadir in Dallas, where reps procured hookers for doctors, the suit alleges. One female rep even allegedly partied with her customers at a strip club:
At the district court level, the trial judge followed previous rulings by saying that Hutcheson did not prove the stipends were kickbacks because when the doctors made reimbursement claims to Medicare they did not expressly link them to the cash they supposedly received from Blackstone. The appeals court threw that logic out in favor of a common-sense test that requires judges to look at all the facts at hand:
Related:
Related:
The ruling follows a string of at least seven federal court decisions which have required that conspirators expressly acknowledge they are breaking the law when fraudulently applying for reimbursement from the federal government for medical expenses. For all practical purposes, this high technical bar meant that Medicare, insurers and healthcare coverage providers would have to find a written confession in order to demonstrate they were being ripped off. As such, the decisions virtually legalized drug price inflation through fraud and kickbacks.
The case, brought by former Blackstone regional manager Susan Hutcheson, features such spectacular allegations of wrongdoing that it would have left the First Circuit appeals court looking ridiculous if it had agreed with the Massachusetts trial judge's decision to dismiss the case for "failing to state a claim."
Hutcheson alleges that Blackstone paid spine doctors between $1,666 and $8,000 a month to make sure they used Blackstone's implants in their surgeries. Although the payments were officially to recruit surgeons for Blackstone's "medical advisory board," the company expressly linked the payments to sales of its products for the physicians' surgeries, Hutcheson claimed. Doctors who stopped using the devices were admonished by company reps and then dropped from the payment list, Hutcheson claims. All advisory board contracts were signed by BMI presidentMatt Lyons, Hutcheson claims.
The Department of Justice supported the case with an amicus brief, perhaps because it noticed that Hutcheson alleged Blackstone executives destroyed documents when they believed they were under investigation by the feds.
"Shredding documents 24 hours a day"
In the summer of 2006, a Blackstone distributor learned that St. Dominic's hospital in Jackson, Miss., was conducting an internal probe of a doctor who had taken payments from the company. After Blackstone declined to provide documents to St. Dominic's to help them with their inquiry, the hospital contacted the FBI. At that point the executive allegedly told Hutcheson he was "shredding documents 24 hours a day."
The scheme was so thorough -- Hutcheson lists all the doctors allegedly on Blackstone's payroll -- that it became burdensome for sales reps to execute. Each month they had to create a fictitious paper trail of "engagements" with the doctors to justify paying them the stipends, she claims. One rep, sales manager Brian Dukate, allegedly complained to vp Paul Sendro, "I cannot just make things up out of thin air":
Surgeons at a strip club
The scheme reached its tawdry nadir in Dallas, where reps procured hookers for doctors, the suit alleges. One female rep even allegedly partied with her customers at a strip club:
At the district court level, the trial judge followed previous rulings by saying that Hutcheson did not prove the stipends were kickbacks because when the doctors made reimbursement claims to Medicare they did not expressly link them to the cash they supposedly received from Blackstone. The appeals court threw that logic out in favor of a common-sense test that requires judges to look at all the facts at hand:
First, we reject the argument that, in the absence of an express legal representation or factual misstatement, a claim can only be false or fraudulent if it fails to comply with a precondition of payment expressly stated in a statute or regulation.The First Circuit is now in conflict with the Seventh Circuit on this issue -- a divide that only the U.S. Supreme Court can decide to resolve.
Second, we reject the argument that a submitting entity's representations about its own legal compliance cannot incorporate an implied representation concerning the behavior of non-submitting entities. These purported limitations do not appear in the text of the [False Claims Act] and are inconsistent with our case law.
... nor do we adopt any categorical rules as to what counts as a materially false or fraudulent claim...
Related:
- Rogues Gallery: DOJ Lists the Worst-Behaved Drug Companies of 2010
- $5B: The Cost to the Taxpayer of Drug Company Pricing Fraud
- $928 for a Bag of Salt: How Drugmakers Rip Off Taxpayers
- Exclusive: How Abbott Labs Allegedly Got Medicaid to Pay $3.3M for Popsicles$
Related:
- Bristol-Myers Docs Studied Diabetes at Disneyland, 3 Execs Claim
- 10 Reasons Drug Prices Always Go Up -- and What We Can Do About It
- Walgreens Allegedly Inflates Drug Prices By 4X -- and the Courts Say It's OK
- 5 Amgen Execs Plead the Fifth on Alleged Kickbacks Described in Spreadsheet
- When Is a Kickback Not a Kickback? In Amgen Case, It's When You Filled Out Paperwork to Get It
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Stryker Howmedica Cervicore: Criminals of the Year
 |
| White Collar Crime Exceeds all Other Crime! Of all the white collar crime health care fraud beats all other industries combined with it's annual theft exceeding $750 billion per year. That breaks down to 1 in every 3 dollar Americans pay. $750 BILLION exceed all US defense spending! |
With medical greed being the biggest driver of death and theft in the US it's no secret that of all the industries in the US the most homicidal and larcenous is without a doubt the medical industry. Their thievery even exceeds that of the financial industry. The medical industry kills about 1 million people each year and that exceeds ALL other industries including the United States Military. (Yes the US Military is a for profit industry.)
Stryker Howmedica the Worst of the Worst?
It's a tough comparison but when it comes to sheer medical corporate sleaze but given it's decades long criminal past and regulatory misconduct (All went unpunished) Stryker Medical, HowMedica WhoreMedica and and its deadly sellout reseacher/physician/surgeons aka clinical investigators win the dubious achievement award for being the worst medical industry gangsters.
Please read the following article:
In Search of a CerviCore “Smoking Gun”
Carol McGrew and eight other patients implanted with Stryker Corporation’s CerviCore cervical disc filed suit against Howmedica, owned by Stryker on April 11, 2014 in an Illinois federal court for alleged damages caused by the disc.
Source: Howmedica Complaint
The Plaintiffs claim the disc was “unreasonably dangerous due to design defects, manufacturing defects and insufficient warnings.” Their case rests on similar metal ion poisoning arguments used in the DePuy ASR metal-on-metal hip lawsuits, with an additional claim of improperly using OP-1 during some of the surgeries.
CerviCore Disc
The CerviCore disc was initially developed by SpineCore, Inc. In 2004, Stryker purchased SpineCore for $120 million in cash, plus up to $265 more when CerviCore and another SpineCore product, FlexiCore, gained FDA approval and were launched.
SpineCore was founded in 2001 by Thomas Errico, M.D. and J.P. Errico. In the 2004 Stryker press release announcing the acquisition, the company said after completion of enrollment in a clinical study, a two-year patient follow-up was planned prior to submission of a premarket approval (PMA) application to the FDA. The company said it expected to submit an IDE (investigational device exemption) application to the FDA for the CerviCore before year end and begin a clinical study in 2005 which would lead to submission of a PMA application in 2008.
The company recruited the Plaintiffs, along with 391 other people to take part in the study. The patients signed “Consent to Participate in a Research Study” forms.
Dangerous Metals Alleged
According to a description in Motion Preservation Surgery of the Spine, published by Elsevier, Inc. in 2008, the device is “composed of two opposing cobalt-chromium-molybdenum bearing surfaces backed with a titanium plasma spray coating to enhance osseous fixation. Two fins on each baseplate, each with three spikes, help achieve initial fixation. An anterior vertebral body stop decreases the chance of posterior placement or migration.”
Source: The Cervicore artificial cervical disc/ www.spine-health.com
The Plaintiffs allege the company portrayed the disc as a device made entirely of titanium.
However, according to their claims, the company used cobalt, chromium, molybdenum, titanium, and nickel to construct many of the discs implanted in the patients, who were not told of the “dangerous” metals contained in the disc.
One of the patients, Colleen Jaeger’s original consent form contains the following description of the CerviCore unit: “The CerviCore Disc is made of two saddleshaped plates and it is implanted in place of the degenerated disc after it is removed. It is made entirely of metal (a cobalt/chrome/molybdenum alloy with a titanium coating).”
Drs. Jonathan Stieber, Jeffrey Fischgrund and Jean-Jacques Abitbol co-authored a book chapter entitled “The CerviCore Cervical Intervertebral Disc Replacement,” in which they listed one of CerviCore’s contraindications as: “Allergy to components of the device, including cobalt, chromium, molybdenum, titanium, or nickel.” James Yue, et al., MOTION PRESERVATION SURGERY OF THE SPINE: ADVANCED TECHNIQUES AND CONTROVERSIES, p. 238, Saunders, 2008.
In 2011, according to the suit, Stryker took out a full page ad in the program for the April Las Vegas meeting of the SAS International Society for the Advancement of Spine Surgery that, “bragged…CerviCore was ‘[c]omprised of CoCrMo – biocompatible material with a history of safety and proven durability with low metal ion release and wear rates in orthopedic implants.’”
Jaeger claims she was informed that she was one of the few who would have her metal levels monitored. She says the company “flatly refused to conduct metal ion tests in many patients and flatly refused to provide most with the results of any tests it had conducted.”
The patients claim to suffer from symptoms consistent with metallosis.
The company’s manufacturing processes were “so faulty they increased the metal-on-metal CerviCore device’s likelihood of emitting metal ions into the subject’s body,” says the suit.
The company produced CerviCore at one of its traditional Stryker Spine plants in Cestas, France, that was used to heat-treating non-articulating products and, according to the suit, was unfamiliar with producing articulating cobalt chromium products.
Rate of Failure Disputed
The Plaintiffs also claim that Stryker misled the public about CerviCore’s rate of failure.
For instance, in 2010, they say through four “affiliated” doctors (Drs. Abitbol, Maroon, Edwards and Fischgrund), the company “bragged that at two years, there were fewer device-related surgical interventions in the CerviCore group (2%) than in the Control group (4%).” 2-Year Results from Four IDE Study Sites: CerviCore Intervertebral Disc vs. Fusion, The Spine Journal, Volume 10, issue 9 Supplement, Pages S139–S140, September, 2010.”
However, they argue that the article’s sample size was only 49 CerviCore patients and the authors admit they lost track of 18 of the patients, so even one surgical revision would be 3.2% of the population.
Dr. Fischgrund operated on Plaintiff Pepke to correct his CerviCore prior to this article’s publication. The suit also claims that long before the article was published, Plaintiff Zaretzka, “had repeatedly reported to her surgeon, Dr. Edwards, that she had unresolved neck pain, hears clicking and grinding noises, suffered from metallosis symptoms and wanted a surgical revision of her device.” She says he refused.
Plaintiff Good also claims that long before the article was published, she informed her surgeon, Dr. Fischgrund, the she had unresolved neck pain, suffered from metallosis symptoms and wanted a revision. The surgeon also allegedly refused. Another CerviCore patient, in a separate lawsuit, claims she told Dr. Maroon long before the article that she also had problems.
“Thus,” claims the suit, “prior to this article’s publication, these co-authors knew of at least five surgical interventions caused by the CerviCore device, which is 16% of the responding sample size, not 2%.”
Stryker Quality Control Problems
In November 2007, the FDA publicly warned Stryker about quality control problems at its Mahwah, New Jersey, plant. The lawsuit says that the FDA cited the company for taking complaints on failures of one of its hip products, “but not applying lessons learned from that failure to its other products (which would include CerviCore).”
The discs were allegedly manufactured at the French facility and then shipped to Mahwah, New Jersey, for final coating and packaging.
The company’s Mahwah facility, “had rampant quality control problems that caused unsafe, unreliable, and contaminant-ridden devices to be released into the market at the very time [Stryker] was manufacturing CerviCore in that facility,” states the suit.
OP-1 Use Claimed
Plaintiffs also argue that due to the fact that CerviCore did not have screws, it had to rely on “some” bone growth to hold it in place. To accomplish that bone growth, they say Stryker, “illegally used or promoted the use of its TCP putty (also called Calstrux, Osteogenic Protein-1, or OP-1) in CerviCore patients.
In April 2008, it was widely reported that the FDA warned Stryker Biotech that the company had violated the law by conducting human experiments without a proper IDE.
The FDA, states the lawsuit, discovered Stryker Biotech had illegally entered into contracts with clinical investigators to use OP-1 in combination with some investigational device study. The FDA did not specify which study OP-1 was used with because records remain sealed when a device has not been approved by the FDA. Plaintiffs say the warning, even if it didn’t specify CerviCore, “demonstrates Stryker’s propensity to conduct studies on human beings without an IDE and to use OP-1 in conjunction with some unapproved study.”
Plaintiff Jaeger claims she had to have a revision because, “among other things, she developed a large bone mass growing from the area of her CerviCore.” Good claims she was found to have a boney growth at the C5 vertebrae.
“Other Plaintiffs are suffering the ill effects of improper use of OP-1, but, since [Stryker] has consistently resisted providing more testing, providing proper and accurate information, providing proper medical care, and/or removing faulty units, it has concealed the true nature of whether it used OP-1 from Plaintiffs,” states the complaint.
Feeling Abandoned
The Plaintiffs say the company became aware of the device’s adverse events and its potential for causing metal poisoning during the study period and abandoned the product. They claim Stryker also abandoned them even though the company continued the human study, actively attended Plaintiff’s doctors’ appointments, and actively denied that the device was faulty.
They claim the company insisted each study participant sign study renewal agreements that contained further waivers in order to continue receiving medical care. Then, shortly after obtaining each renewal and waiver, the company, “abruptly ended its study early and informed Plaintiffs it would no longer provide any care for them.”
They say that the company has never provided them with accurate information about what was put in their bodies. Because of this “concealment”, they claim they could not have discovered any of this prior to the commencement of this action.
Summary of Allegations
In summary, the nine patients and their spouses allege that the company, knew of multiple dangers with CerviCore, including that it might not implant properly, that its design caused excessive wear, that it was prone to breaking down prematurely, that it was prone to delaminating, that they manufactured it using improper processes, that they manufactured it in a facility prone to contamination, that it was made from cobalt, chromium, molybdenum, titanium, and nickel, and that it was likely to cause metallosis.
They allege “Gross Negligence” because the company knew it operated a human trial outside the bounds of any regulatory approval it obtained; knew they did not have regulatory approval to use OP-1 in conjunction with CerviCore on Plaintiffs or other humans and proceeded nonetheless [and] knew CerviCore presented danger to patients, particularly those with allergies to certain metals but knew the study participants were not being tested for metal allergies.”
In a parting shot, the patients say Stryker’s conduct was “so despicable and so contemptible that it would be looked down upon and despised by ordinary decent people.”
Fishing for a “Smoking Gun”
Plaintiffs want a jury trial, compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and any other relief the court deems proper.
The attorneys for the patients clearly want a chance to depose Stryker executives and go fishing—hoping to find a “smoking gun.” So far, plaintiffs have only circumstantial evidence. Stryker has not publicly responded to the allegations.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Medical Error Statistics
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last 30 years you probably already know that American doctors are poorly trained, ignorant, arrogant, callous and greedy cowardly money whores who work mostly for health care facilities run by disease exploiting criminal corporate gangsters. Just like health care acquired infections and adverse drug reactions medical errors rake in huge amounts of revenue for the medical corporations. This is why medical errors remain on the rise.
Shocking Trend: Medical Errors Have Increased Dramatically in the U.S.
A new editorial in The Lancet medical journal cites staggering statistics that medical errors now occur in as many one-third of all U.S. hospitalizations.
The editors present other attention-getting statistics from several scientific studies establishing that medical errors remain a serious problem in the U.S. and appear to have increased over the last 10 years, despite national attention called to this problem.
The Lancet editors ask, “Why?” And, they make some suggestions that should well be considered by medical professionals, patients and caregivers, and policy makers in the U.S.
The Alarming Statistics:
The editorial, entitled, “Medical errors in the USA: human or systemic?“, appears in the April 16, 2011 Issue of The Lancet. It cites and describes the findings of several published studies on medical errors in the U.S. by recognized U.S. scientific and professional sources. Among them are the following:
- The US Institute of Medicine’s 1999 report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, estimated that avoidable medical errors contributed annually to 44,000—98,000 deaths in US hospitals. Hospital errors were reported to constitute the eighth leading cause of death nationally, accounting for more U.S. deaths than breast cancer, AIDS, and motor-vehicle accidents. This drew national attention to the problem.
- Yet, more than 10 years later, the problem of medical errors remains and seems to have increased. A new study reported in the April, 2011 issue of Health Affairs, found that by one measure, medical errors occur in as many as one-third of hospital admissions in the U.S., and may be ten times greater than previously measured. “The most common are medication errors, followed by surgical errors, procedure errors, and nosocomial infections,” according to The Lancet’s review of the study.
The study, conducted by scientists and professionals at three leading U.S. medical schools as well as at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, compared three different methods commonly used for measuring “adverse events” in hospitals: (i) voluntary reporting, (ii) the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Patient Safety Indicators (which rely on automated review of discharge codes to detect adverse events), and (iii) the Global Trigger Tool pioneered by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (based upon independent review of medical charts, with follow up investigation where indicated).
The study found that this third method measured at least ten times more confirmed serious medical errors than did the other two methods. As observed by The Lancet’s editorial, “This finding suggests that the two currently used methods for detecting medical errors in the USA are unreliable, underestimate the real burden, and also risk misdirection of present efforts to improve patient safety.” - A study reported in the November 25, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, also confirmed that medical errors in U.S. hospitals are a serious problem. The study, conducted by lead author Christopher Landrigan, M.D., M.P.H. of the Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, and a group of doctors from Harvard Medical School, Standford University School of Medicine, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, reported that even in places where local governments have made efforts to improve safety of inpatient care, such as in hospitals in North Carolina, the high rate of detected medical errors did not change over a 5-year period between 2002 and 2007.
- A November, 2010, document from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services reported that one in seven Medicare beneficiaries have complications from medical errors when hospitalized, and that these medical errors contribute to about 180,000 deaths of patients per year.
- A study by Jill Van Den Bos and other professionals of Milliman’s Denver Health practice reported in the April, 2011 Issue of Health Affairs found that the measurable cost of US medical errors amounted to US $17.1 Billion in 2008 (0.72% of the $2.39 trillion spent on health care that year). Ten types of error accounted for more than two-thirds of the total cost of medical errors. The top two most costly medical errors are postoperative infections and pressure ulcers. The three most common medical errors were pressure ulcers, post-operative infections, and postlaminectomy syndrome.
- Another study, conducted by John Goodman and associates of the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, TX and also reported in the April, 2011 Issue of Health Affairs, reported that medical errors cause as many as 187,000 deaths in hospitals each year, and 6.1 million injuries, both in and out of hospitals in the U.S. This study estimated that the social costs, in lives lost and disabilities caused, from these medical errors amounted to between $393 Billion to $958 Billion in 2006, equivalent to 18% to 45% of total US health-care spending in that year. These authors recommended as a possible solution that patients should be “offered voluntary, no-fault insurance prior to treatment or surgery [so that they] would be compensated if they suffered an adverse event—regardless of the cause of their misfortune—and providers would have economic incentives to reduce the number of such events.”
http://www.helpingyoucare.com/12784/alarming-trend-medical-errors-have-increased-in-the-u-s
Doctors vs Guns
Here are a few statistics on Doctors vs Gun Owners:
Doctors
*safety statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services.
The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.
Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171
Now think about this:
Gun Owners
*safety statistics courtesy of FBI.
The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. (Yes, that’s 80 million)
The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .0000188
Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT Almost everyone has at least one doctor. This means you are over 9,000 times more likely to be killed by a doctor as by a gun owner!!! Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!
Out of concern for the public at large, We withheld the statistics on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention!
Doctors vs Guns
Here are a few statistics on Doctors vs Gun Owners:
 |
| With MDs it's money first! |
*safety statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services.
Now think about this:
 |
| With gun owners it's safety first. |
Gun Owners
*safety statistics courtesy of FBI.
Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT Almost everyone has at least one doctor. This means you are over 9,000 times more likely to be killed by a doctor as by a gun owner!!! Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!
Out of concern for the public at large, We withheld the statistics on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention!
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Medical Billing Fraud
Medical Billing Fraud is Rampant
Blue Cross Blue Shield estimates that 1/3 of every dollar Americans spend on health care services goes to cover waste and fraud. That's more than we spend on national defense and we spent nearly 600 billion on our defense. Much of this fraud is billing fraud and chances are your own doctor is one of the thieves.
Understanding Healthcare Fraud
Patients and their medical insurance information can be exploited in various ways that result in increased costs and decreased confidence in the healthcare system. As part of our efforts to improve and protect the healthcare system, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield National Anti-Fraud Department is undertaking a nationwide campaign to share how physicians, healthcare providers and customers can help with healthcare fraud detection and prevention.Protect Yourself
We encourage
you to follow these general guidelines to safeguard yourself from
preventable medical errors and improve the quality of care you receive.
- After care, review your statement to verify accuracy. Learn how to read your Explanation of Benefits.
- Ask your doctor to explain the reason for services
- Report any discrepancies to your health insurance plan or payer
- Beware of "free" medical services, as illicit entities use this lure to obtain information
- Safeguard your insurance card the same as you would your credit card
- Report instances where co-payments or deductibles are waived
- Don’t give your insurance number to marketers or solicitors
- Never sign a blank insurance form
The Costs of Health Care Fraud
Healthcare expenditures topped $2 trillion in
2008 and are expected to exceed $3 trillion by 2014. The most
conservative estimate of the amount of healthcare expenditures lost to
fraud is three percent, which equates to over $70 billion annually.
That amount costs the average family of four
over $200 a year above what they would pay for the honest delivery of
healthcare goods and services. Losses attributed to wasteful spending,
including fraud and abuse, may be as high as 30%.
Report Fraud
If you suspect that healthcare dollars are
being paid improperly or as a result of false or misleading information
provided to a Blue Cross and Blue Shield company, notify your local Blue Cross and Blue Shield company.Our Partners
Federal Bureau of InvestigationOffice of Inspector General
Department of Health and Human Services
Office of Inspector General
Office of Personnel Management
Office of Inspector General
U.S. Postal Service
Federal Trade Commission
U.S. Postal Inspection Service
Food and Drug Administration
Department of Health and Human Services
Office of Inspector General
Department of Labor
National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association
Coalition Against Insurance Fraud
Association of Certified Fraud Examiners
State Attorneys General
State Departments of Insurance
State and Local Police Departments White Collar Crime Units
State Medical Licensing and Disciplinary Boards
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)