Whistle-blowers have helped the Department of Justice (DOJ) recover at least $9.3 billion from healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies that allegedly defrauded states and the federal government, according to a report published in the Sept. 2 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.
DOJ in the 1990s began to use whistle-blowers in efforts to fight healthcare fraud, and whistle-blowers currently initiate 90 percent of such cases for the department. For the report, the researchers reviewed DOJ records from 379 healthcare fraud cases between 1996 and 2005, although they had information for only three-fourths of those cases. According to the report, the number of healthcare fraud cases has decreased in recent years, but the amount that DOJ recovered in those cases increased.
The researchers cited the need to conduct additional research on whistle-blower lawsuits to determine which types of cases are more likely to lead to recoveries to allow DOJ to expedite such cases. Read the abstract.
