Health care fraud and abuse enforcement: Relationship scrutiny

Health care fraud and abuse enforcement: Relationship scrutiny
Source: Deloitte

Where is fraud and abuse enforcement headed in health care? One emerging area of interest is relationship scrutiny. Relationships can be complex in the business of health care: tracking and analyzing them is an important part of minimizing the fraud and abuse that may result from questionable relationships and improper influence.

Many organizations depend on analytics to understand their own performance. Insights and patterns within the data are often used to inform strategy and decision making. Researchers can apply analytics to identify external trends and factors that may impact businesses. To that end, Deloitte researchers used analytics techniques to examine the text of tens of thousands of federal regulations and identify emerging trends in health care fraud and abuse enforcement. The results are telling: Federal health care regulators are emphasizing relationship scrutiny in their fraud and abuse enforcement efforts. Also, discussion of health care fraud and abuse topics – including relationship scrutiny – is recurring, as evidenced by the cyclical rise and fall in frequency and relevance of keyword groups related to “enforcement,” “value-based care,” and “fraud and abuse.” The bottom line: discussion of these topics is present; relationship scrutiny is likely here to stay.