Becoming a whistleblower and notifying federal authorities of Medicare fraud is a big public service and can even lead to a lucrative whistleblower award. Furthermore, the chief concern for interested whistleblowers is whether they could get reprimanded at their job for blowing the whistle on healthcare fraud or even fired, but any form of whistleblower retaliation is unlawful under the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act.
If you think that you have uncovered evidence of Medicare fraud and want to learn more about what could happen next, here are four things to know.
- There are Lots of Known Ways to Defraud Medicare
Medicare is an $800 billion federal program, but estimates are that tens of billions, if not nearly $100 billion of that is lost to fraud every year – and that estimate is widely regarded as a conservative one.
A lot of this type of health care fraud can be categorized into one of the following types of schemes, many of them having to do with fraudulent billing tactics:
- Phantom billing, where medical goods or services are billed against Medicare even though they were never provided or the purported patient does not exist
- Double billing for the same goods or services
- Providing medically unnecessary healthcare
- Buying prescription drugs with Medicare drug plan money and then reselling them
- Upcoding, or providing a healthcare service to a patient, but then billing Medicare for a similar but more expensive one
- Unbundling, or billing for each service independently even though they are normally charged in a discounted package because they are often performed together
- Paying or taking financial kickbacks for referring patients to a certain healthcare provider, or to a provider that the referring party has a financial stake in
However, these are just the types of Medicare fraud that have been discovered. There are likely other ways of defrauding the program that have yet to be detected. Therefore, even if the evidence that you have uncovered does not fit squarely into one of these types of Medicare fraud does not necessarily mean that it is not a problem.
- What Happens After Deciding the Blow the Whistle on Medicare Fraud
Most people are not completely familiar with how other civil or criminal cases move forward in the justice system. Because whistleblower cases are different and even more nuanced and complex, even fewer people understand the process – and those that presume that they are just like other cases find themselves misinformed.
Whistleblower cases are nearly unique in that they have three parties to them:
- The whistleblower
- The government
- The defendant
After you have found evidence of Medicare fraud and abuse, decided to report suspected fraud and become a whistleblower, and hired a law firm well versed in federal laws to represent you, you will continue to gather evidence to support your allegations. This is a sensitive endeavor, as most whistleblowers only have access to the incriminating evidence through their employment, and their employer may be actively trying to cover up the fraudulent activity.
Being represented by an experienced whistleblower lawyer is essential for this stage of the process. They will have gone through it before and will see how to gather evidence to support your case without exposing yourself to the risk of being detected for reporting fraud.
Once you have a strong case, the next step is to present it to the law enforcement agency that would have jurisdiction over your case. Typically you would present information to the Health and Human Services Office or Office of the Inspector General (OIG) hotline. For Medicare fraud, reports are often made to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS. The goal is typically to persuade agents there to intervene in your case, conduct the investigation that you started, and prosecute the fraudsters.
If the agency declines to intervene, you can still pursue the case on the government’s behalf.
- You Can Receive a Financial Award
One of the main incentives for whistleblowers is the award that they can receive for bringing the evidence to the attention of federal law enforcement. That award can be substantial.
Because Medicare is a federal program, most claims of Medicare fraud advance under the False Claims Act (31 U.S.C. §§ 3729 et seq.). This federal law provides an avenue for whistleblowers who have evidence of fraud against the government.
Importantly, the False Claims Act offers quite generous whistleblower awards, even when compared to other whistleblower statutes. The amount that you receive depends on several factors, the most important of which is whether the government intervened in your case or not. If it did, you can receive between 15 and 25 percent of the proceeds of the case. If it did not and you prosecuted the case on behalf of the government, you can recover up to 30 percent of the case’s proceeds.
Other factors include:
- Whether there are other whistleblowers who played a role in the case
- How important the evidence was that you brought to the table
- Whether you played a part in the Medicare fraud
- Your Job is Protected
Because workplace retaliation is such a foreseeable outcome of becoming a whistleblower, and because the federal government relies so heavily on whistleblowers, it should come as no surprise that the False Claims Act and other whistleblower statutes provide legal protections in the workplace for those who engage in lawful whistleblower activities.
For Medicare fraud whistleblowers, the False Claims Act’s anti-retaliation provision, 31 U.S.C. § 3730(h), is particularly strong. Not only does it protect you from retaliatory conduct that falls short of termination, like workplace harassment and threats to fire you, it also entitles you to significant remedies if your employer breaks the law and commits an act of reprisal.
