Costs, concerns rise on home healthcare: Abuse, fraud stir call for oversight

The Boston Globe reports:

One personal care attendant was arrested last year in Boston, accused of leaving a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy undressed, lacking water, and without stockings that prevent blood clots. Last summer, another attendant allegedly charged thousands of dollars on the credit cards of her patient. A year before, an attendant in Brockton was charged with creating an alias and defrauding the state of more than $20,000 to treat himself.

As the state Medicaid program has significantly increased the amount of money it spends on personal care attendants over the past decade, reports of fraud, abuse, and neglect have tripled, state officials said. The correlation raises new concerns about a system that requires no training, certification, or criminal background checks for attendants and operates with minimal oversight over the low-paid home healthcare workers.

State officials say the rise in abuse and fraud cases is a result primarily of the program's growth, not an exploding rate of these crimes. But the problems are expected only to multiply in coming years, as the home healthcare program continues to expand. Those issues have drawn the attention of lawmakers on Beacon Hill, where at least one bill proposing tighter regulation has surfaced. Meanwhile, prosecutors seek to recoup losses, and even some advocates for home healthcare workers are voicing concern.

"There are definitely areas that need improvement," said Mike Fadel, executive vice president of Local 1199 SEIU, the union that represents personal care attendants. "Everybody is engaged in discussion to address these areas of concern. . . .. Whatever fraud or abuse exists needs to be looked at very closely and rooted out, but this is a low-cost, high-quality program. It's what consumers want."

The Medicaid program, which provides healthcare services to the poor and disabled, increased spending on personal care attendants in Massachusetts from about $100 million a decade ago to more than $330 million this year, growth that reflects the state's efforts to care for an increasingly older population in their homes, rather than at hospitals, where the costs are higher.

The health care statists tell us money will be saved when the government manages health care because the private sector will not be wasting money on marketing costs.But,look here in the real word:government is a monopoly incapable of preventing fraud which costs a lot of money.Much more than marketing costs of the private sector.