Senators solicit ideas on preventing fraud, waste and abuse

Six members of the Senate Finance Committee last week announced a bipartisan effort to solicit ideas from the health-care community on ways to combat waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

The lawmakers asked interested parties to submit white papers offering recommendations and innovative solutions to improve program integrity, strengthen payment reforms and enhance fraud and abuse enforcement. Deadline for submissions is June 29.

“We believe federal efforts would be strengthened by input from members across the health-care community: providers, payers, health plans, contractors, nonprofit entities, consumers, data analytics entities, governmental partners and patients,” senators wrote in an open letter. “Drawing on the collective wisdom and accumulated insights of thousands of professionals and individual experiences could offer a fresh perspective and potentially identify solutions that may have been overlooked or underutilized.”

The National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) applauded the effort.

“There is nothing more valuable than coming together to solve this from all angles,’’ the organization said in a statement. “We look forward to submitting our ideas to the committee, among which include credentialing of home health owners and managers and a requirement that all home health agencies have a corporate compliance plan.”

The American Association for Homecare has worked with the government for many years on methods to prevent fraud, waste and abuse in the home medical equipment industry.