A new report from the Dept. of Health & Human Service’s Inspector General says that forty-four percent of medical schools are providing instruction to students on Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse laws.
Current law doesn’t require medical schools or hospitals offering physician residency or fellowship programs to provide instruction on compliance with Medicare and Medicaid laws aimed at preventing fraud and abuse, even though such fraud and abuse costs U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year and puts the programs’ beneficiaries’ health and welfare at risk.
OIG surveyed all accredited allopathic and osteopathic medical schools and institutions offering residency and fellowship programs to determine whether they provided instruction on compliance with three Federal anti-fraud statutes: the civil False Claims Act, the anti-kickback statute, and the physician self-referral statute.