Corporate Compliance

Pfizer fraud money funds Florida whistleblower plan

Compliance Monitor, September 23, 2009

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Florida’s state Legislature has created a program that will reward whistleblowers up to 25% of recovered funds for exposing Medicaid fraud cases, according to The Tampa Tribune.
 
Florida recently received a $58 million share of Pfizer’s $2.3 billion healthcare fraud settlement. The new program will get a jumpstart of $1 million from that settlement.
 
Florida’s Medicaid costs exceeded $16 million last year according to state auditors. Data estimates that 5 to 20% of total Medicaid costs were lost to overbilling, false claims, and other fraudulent practices.
 
The bill will bring together law enforcement and health care agencies, including the Department of Health and Agency for Health Care Administration, to help allay Medicaid fraud schemes.
 
Senator Don Gaetz, who sponsored the fraud legislation, said in the article that Florida never had “an effective system of inducing and using information from people who see bad acts going on. But now we do.”



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