Opinion

MONITORING MEDICAID

Medicaid fraudsters just can’t seem to catch a break these days.

In the latest development, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo last week called for the creation of a comprehensive database of all licensed New York home health-care providers.

The registry would give potential employers, clients and state officials access to the names, addresses and dates of birth of all certified home-health aides, as well as their employment history and the details of their certification.

The need for such a database was made evident over the past few weeks, as Cuomo obtained a series of guilty pleas from crooked home health-care agencies and certification schools that combined to scam Medicaid out of millions.

Give Cuomo credit: He’s made serious strides in his fight against fraud in New York’s $46 billion-a-year Medicaid program – fraud that could be costing taxpayers a whopping $18 billion annually.

And home health care is a big part of the problem. Cuomo’s latest probe identified $100 million in fraud in this sector alone, which consumes $1.3 billion a year of Medicaid spending.

Investigators regularly found health workers buying credentials from certification schools – or “borrowing” them from other workers. And workers and provider agencies would grossly over-bill Medicaid, often for working multiple locations at the same time.

That’s where the database comes in.

The home health-care sector in particular is so anarchic because – short of launching a massive, subpoena-backed investigation – authorities at present have no way of knowing what’s going on.

A multi-level reimbursement structure means that the state cuts checks to home-care collection agencies without knowing what specific services it’s paying for. And, unlike in other health-care fields, no one even knows the total number of certified home-care workers the state has.

A centralized database, then, would have an instant chilling effect on Medicaid fraud. Message: You can be found.

Just as important, any long-term solution – like a more detailed reimbursement process – would depend on the information gathered in such a registry. (Just ask the NYPD: Its revolutionary CompStat crime-data system was essential in the crime reductions of the ’90s.)

Cuomo’s proposed registry, then, is a very good start in the fight against Medicaid fraud – and welcome news for New York’s long-suffering taxpayers.

Now it’s time for Albany to get behind the Cuomo proposal.