Read more: Local, State, Health
ONONDAGA COUNTY -- At nearly 600-million dollars, Onondaga County's Medicaid budget accounts for about 40 percent of the county's property taxes. Since the county beefed up its Medicaid Fraud Unit two years ago with investigators and special computer software taxpayers have been saving millions of dollars by exposing such things as the recipient who claimed she visited the emergency room 108 times last year, or the man with 155 prescriptions.
Action News obtained a Medicaid fraud report compiled by the County Department of Social Services. Since the beginning of this year, investigators checked into 597 tips and uncovered 382 discrepancies resulting in case denials. They also denied 300 people who misrepresented their income, secured 185-thousand dollars in repayments for medicaid and exposed 150-thousand dollars in overpayments. Overall they uncovered 1-point-3 million dollars in potential fraud.
The County referred 26 cases, worth 210-thousand dollars in potential fraud to the District Attorney's Office. According to Chief Deputy District Attorney Rick Trunfio, "when it gets referred to us... the level of intent and fraud is so bad or they just haven't cooperated with the agency."
Truynfio says the D.A.'s Office has an assistant prosecutor who specifically handles medicaid fraud. That prosecutor may become even busier. Onondaga County Social Services Commissioner David Sutkowy revealed his investigators have uncovered a potentially widespread problem with unlicensed home health care providers who are padding their hours or not providing care to Medicaid patients. "The referrals we got were from the County Department of Long Term Care based on suspicions they had."
The Mahoney administration now wants to expand its efforts with new procedures and computer programs like voice recognition software to prevent Medicaid fraud from happening in the first place.
