Kaiser Health News

A Covid Test Medicare Scam May Be a Trial Run for Further Fraud

Published

12 months ago

May 18, 2023

by Susan Jaffe
Thu, 18 May 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Medicare coverage for at-home covid-19 tests ended last week, but the scams spawned by the temporary pandemic benefit could have lingering consequences for seniors.

Medicare advocates around the country who track fraud noticed an eleventh-hour rise in complaints from beneficiaries who received tests — sometimes by the dozen — that they never requested. It's a signal that someone may have been using, and could continue to use, seniors' Medicare information to improperly bill the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General has received complaints from around the country about unsolicited tests being billed to Medicare, said a top investigator. Earlier this year, the office posted a fraud warning on its website, urging consumers to report this and other covid-related scams.

“Unfortunately, most of these schemes are the result of bad actors receiving stolen Medicare beneficiary information,” Scott Lampert, assistant inspector general for investigations, told KFF Health News.

Being targeted once can mean a person is vulnerable to future scams. A stolen Medicare number can be used repeatedly to get payment for all kinds of things or sold to other fraudsters, said María Alvarez, who oversees New York state's Senior Medicare Patrol. The organization helps identify and educate beneficiaries about Medicare fraud throughout the country.

“If you have someone's Medicare number, you can bill Medicare for procedures, tests, drugs, services, and durable medical equipment,” Alvarez said. “On the dark web, Medicare numbers are more valuable than credit card or Social Security numbers.”

One beneficiary in Indiana suspected something was amiss after receiving 32 unrequested tests over a 10-day period, said Nancy Moore, the Senior Medicare Patrol program director for Indiana. None of the people who submitted a complaint recalled giving out their Medicare number, she said.

In another variation of the problem, Medicare paid for tests for some Ohio beneficiaries who never received them, said Lisa Dalga, project manager for Ohio's Senior Medicare Patrol.

“Information is the commodity of the 21st century,” said Moore, who said she urges beneficiaries to guard their Medicare numbers.

It is possible that some unwanted packages were a mistake, after pharmacies or other suppliers turned a one-time request into a continuing monthly order, a switch allowed under the program's rules that beneficiaries were responsible for correcting.

Along with those from New York, Indiana, and Ohio, Senior Medicare Patrol directors in Tennessee, Texas, and Utah told KFF Health News they noted a rise in complaints about the unwanted tests as the benefit's cutoff date approached.

Alvarez said lately test suppliers had “gotten more aggressive,” calling and emailing seniors — something legitimate Medicare representatives do not do — as well as running misleading internet ads.

When the covid-19 public health emergency ended on May 11, Medicare stopped paying for over-the-counter tests, though it continues to cover those provided in a clinic, doctor's office, or other health care setting and processed by a laboratory. Some private Medicare Advantage plans may continue paying for the at-home tests.

Medicare spent $900.8 billion providing health coverage to 64 million beneficiaries in 2021. But the program loses as much as $90 billion a year to fraudulent claims. Some of the more well-known scams have involved medical equipment like power wheelchairs.

Sara Lonardo, a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, confirmed Medicare received complaints about unwanted tests but said they came from only “a small portion” of Medicare beneficiaries who received tests.

Last year, President Joe Biden's administration offered all households a limited number of at-home tests for free, increasing access to testing as part of its effort to combat covid-19.

A few months later, in April 2022, CMS decided to pay for eight tests per month for those with Medicare Part B outpatient coverage, including tens of millions of seniors, one of the groups most susceptible to severe illness and death from the virus. It was the first time the agency agreed to cover non-prescription, over-the-counter products at no cost to beneficiaries.

In a statement last month, federal law enforcement officials said “wrongdoers allegedly sought to exploit the program by repeatedly supplying patients or, in some instances, deceased patients, with dozens of COVID-19 tests that they did not want or need.”

So far, prosecutors at the Department of Justice have confirmed only one case involving the testing scam. A doctor in Florida and a test supplier in Georgia face charges after they were accused of illegally paying an unnamed Virginia marketing company approximately $85,000 to obtain beneficiary numbers “for thousands of Medicare beneficiaries throughout the United States,” according to an indictment filed by the Department of Justice last month and obtained by KFF Health News.

The indictment said the pair submitted more than $8.4 million in fraudulent claims for covid tests “regardless of whether the Medicare beneficiaries had requested or needed the tests.”

Lampert declined to say how many complaints the OIG had received, adding, “There may or may not be some other ongoing investigations that we just cannot discuss yet.”

The details of several Medicare Summary Notices — quarterly statements of services beneficiaries received — obtained by KFF Health News show Medicare paid suppliers $94.08 for at-home covid testing using a billing code for “a single test.” Most retail pharmacies sell a two-pack of tests for about $24.

Lonardo said Medicare paid up to $12 for one test and that the number of covered tests was limited to reduce “the risk of abusive billing.” She declined to explain why the Medicare Summary Notices indicated a payment of $94.08.

Beneficiaries may be the best fraud detectives for preventing medical identity theft. Senior Medicare Patrol programs encourage them to look for any items on their benefits statements — like back braces and lab tests — that Medicare paid for but that they never received.

If Medicare has paid for an item once, beneficiaries may not be able to get it when they really need it — regardless of whether they actually received it.

Diane Borton, a 72-year-old from New Smyrna Beach, Fla., has thrown out some of the expired tests she received but never asked for, yet she still has 25 tests. She said she called the 1-800-MEDICARE helpline twice about the unwanted packages but was told nothing could be done to stop them.

Borton didn't pay for her supply, but that's not why she's concerned. “I don't want my government paying for something that I'm not going to use and I didn't ask for,” she said. “I feel like it is such a waste of money.”

People with Medicare or private Medicare Advantage plans who receive medical supplies they didn't order can contact the Senior Medicare Patrol Resource Center at 1-877-808-2468.

By: Susan Jaffe
Title: A Covid Test Medicare Scam May Be a Trial Run for Further Fraud
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/covid-test-medicare-scam-fraud-identity-theft/
Published Date: Thu, 18 May 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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Stranded in the ER, Seniors Await Hospital Care and Suffer Avoidable Harm

Published

33 mins ago

May 6, 2024

Staff Editor

Judith Graham
Mon, 06 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Every day, the scene plays out in hospitals across America: Older men and women lie on gurneys in emergency room corridors moaning or suffering silently as harried medical staff attend to crises.

Even when physicians determine these patients need to be admitted to the hospital, they often wait for hours — sometimes more than a day — in the ER in pain and discomfort, not getting enough food or water, not moving around, not being helped to the bathroom, and not getting the kind of care doctors deem necessary.

“You walk through ER hallways, and they're lined from end to end with patients on stretchers in various states of distress calling out for help, including a number of older patients,” said Hashem Zikry, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Health.

Physicians who staff emergency rooms say this problem, known as ER boarding, is as bad as it's ever been — even worse than during the first years of the covid-19 pandemic, when hospitals filled with desperately ill patients.

While boarding can happen to all ER patients, adults 65 and older, who account for nearly 20% of ER visits, are especially vulnerable during long waits for care. Also, seniors may encounter boarding more often than other patients. The best estimates I could find, published in 2019, before the covid-19 pandemic, suggest that 10% of patients were boarded in ERs before receiving hospital care. About 30% to 50% of these patients were older adults.

“It's a public health crisis,” said Aisha Terry, an associate professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and the president of the board of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which sponsored a summit on boarding in September.

What's going on? I spoke to almost a dozen doctors and researchers who described the chaotic situation in ERs. They told me staff shortages in hospitals, which affect the number of beds available, are contributing to the crisis. Also, they explained, hospital administrators are setting aside more beds for patients undergoing lucrative surgeries and other procedures, contributing to bottlenecks in ERs and leaving more patients in limbo.

Then, there's high demand for hospital services, fueled in part by the aging of the U.S. population, and backlogs in discharging patients because of growing problems securing home health care and nursing home care, according to Arjun Venkatesh, chair of emergency medicine at the Yale School of Medicine.

The impact of long ER waits on seniors who are frail, with multiple medical issues, is especially serious. Confined to stretchers, gurneys, or even hard chairs, often without dependable aid from nurses, they're at risk of losing strength, forgoing essential medications, and experiencing complications such as delirium, according to Saket Saxena, a co-director of the geriatric emergency department at the Cleveland Clinic.

When these patients finally secure a hospital bed, their stays are longer and medical complications more common. And new research finds that the risk of dying in the hospital is significantly higher for older adults when they stay in ERs overnight, as is the risk of adverse events such as falls, infections, bleeding, heart attacks, strokes, and bedsores.

Ellen Danto-Nocton, a geriatrician in Milwaukee, was deeply concerned when an 88-year-old relative with “strokelike symptoms” spent two days in the ER a few years ago. Delirious, immobile, and unable to sleep as alarms outside his bed rang nonstop, the older man spiraled downward before he was moved to a hospital room. “He really needed to be in a less chaotic environment,” Danto-Nocton said.

Several weeks ago, Zikry of UCLA Health helped care for a 70-year-old woman who'd fallen and broken her hip while attending a basketball game. “She was in a corner of our ER for about 16 hours in an immense amount of pain that was very difficult to treat adequately,” he said. ERs are designed to handle crises and stabilize patients, not to “take care of patients who we've already decided need to be admitted to the hospital,” he said.

How common is ER boarding and where is it most acute? No one knows, because hospitals aren't required to report data about boarding publicly. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services retired a measure of boarding in 2021. New national measures of emergency care capacity have been proposed but not yet approved.

“It's not just the extent of ED boarding that we need to understand. It's the extent of acute hospital capacity in our communities,” said Venkatesh of Yale, who helped draft the new measures.

In the meantime, some hospital systems are publicizing their plight by highlighting capacity constraints and the need for more hospital beds. Among them is Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, which announced in January that ER boarding had risen 32% from October 2022 to September 2023. At the end of that period, patients admitted to the hospital spent a median of 14 hours in the ER and 26% spent more than 24 hours.

Maura Kennedy, Mass General's chief of geriatric emergency medicine, described an 80-something woman with a respiratory infection who languished in the ER for more than 24 hours after physicians decided she needed inpatient hospital care.

“She wasn't mobilized, she had nothing to cognitively engage her, she hadn't eaten, and she became increasingly agitated, trying to get off the stretcher and arguing with staff,” Kennedy told me. “After a prolonged hospital stay, she left the hospital more disabled than she was when she came in.”

When I asked ER doctors what older adults could do about these problems, they said boarding is a health system issue that needs health system and policy changes. Still, they had several suggestions.

“Have another person there with you to advocate on your behalf,” said Jesse Pines, chief of clinical innovation at US Acute Care Solutions, the nation's largest physician-owned emergency medicine practice. And have that person speak up if they feel you're getting worse or if staffers are missing problems.

Alexander Janke, a clinical instructor of emergency medicine at the University of Michigan, advises people, “Be prepared to wait when you come to an ER” and “bring a medication list and your medications, if you can.”

To stay oriented and reduce the possibility of delirium, “make sure you have your hearing aids and eyeglasses with you,” said Michael Malone, medical director of senior services for Advocate Aurora Health, a 20-hospital system in Wisconsin and northern Illinois. “Whenever possible, try to get up and move around.”

Friends or family caregivers who accompany older adults to the ER should ask to be at their bedside, when possible, and “try to make sure they eat, drink, get to the bathroom, and take routine medications for underlying medical conditions,” Malone said.

Older adults or caregivers who are helping them should try to bring “things that would engage you cognitively: magazines, books … music, anything that you might focus on in a hallway where there isn't a TV to entertain you,” Kennedy said.

“Experienced patients often show up with eye masks and ear plugs” to help them rest in ERs with nonstop stimulation, said Zikry of UCLA. “Also, bring something to eat and drink in case you can't get to the cafeteria or it's a while before staffers bring these to you.”

We're eager to hear from readers about questions you'd like answered, problems you've been having with your care, and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit kffhealthnews.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.

——————————
By: Judith Graham
Title: Stranded in the ER, Seniors Await Hospital Care and Suffer Avoidable Harm
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/emergency-room-boarding-older-adults-harm/
Published Date: Mon, 06 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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Kaiser Health News

Could Better Inhalers Help Patients, and the Planet?

Published

3 hours ago

May 6, 2024

Staff Editor

Martha Bebinger, WBUR
Mon, 06 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Miguel Divo, a lung specialist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, sits in an exam room across from Joel Rubinstein, who has asthma. Rubinstein, a retired psychiatrist, is about to get a checkup and hear a surprising pitch — for the planet, as well as his health.

Divo explains that boot-shaped inhalers, which represent nearly 90% of the U.S. market for asthma medication, save lives but also contribute to climate change. Each puff from an inhaler releases a hydrofluorocarbon gas that is 1,430 to 3,000 times as powerful as the most commonly known greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

“That absolutely never occurred to me,” said Rubinstein. “Especially, I mean, these are little, teeny things.”

So Divo has begun offering a more eco-friendly option to some patients with asthma and other lung diseases: a plastic, gray cylinder about the size and shape of a hockey puck that contains powdered medicine. Patients suck the powder into their lungs — no puff of gas required and no greenhouse gas emissions.

“You have the same medications, two different delivery systems,” Divo said.

Patients in the United States are prescribed roughly 144 million of what doctors call metered-dose inhalers each year, according to the most recently available data published in 2020. The cumulative amount of gas released is the equivalent of driving half a million gas-powered cars for a year. So, the benefits of moving to dry powder inhalers from gas inhalers could add up.

Hydrofluorocarbon gas contributes to climate change, which is creating more wildfire smoke, other types of air pollution, and longer allergy seasons. These conditions can make breathing more difficult — especially for people with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD — and increase the use of inhalers.

Divo is one of a small but growing number of U.S. physicians determined to reverse what they see as an unhealthy cycle.

“There is only one planet and one human race,” Divo said. “We are creating our own problems and we need to do something.”

So Divo is working with patients like Rubinstein who may be willing to switch to dry powder inhalers. Rubinstein said no to the idea at first because the powder inhaler would have been more expensive. Then his insurer increased the copay on the metered-dose inhaler so Rubinstein decided to try the dry powder.

“For me, price is a big thing,” said Rubinstein, who has tracked health care and pharmaceutical spending in his professional roles for years. Inhaling the medicine using more of his own lung power was an adjustment. “The powder is a very strange thing, to blow powder into your mouth and lungs.”

But for Rubinstein, the new inhaler works and his asthma is under control. A recent study found that some patients in the United Kingdom who use dry powder inhalers have better asthma control while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In Sweden, where the vast majority of patients use dry powder inhalers, rates of severe asthma are lower than in the United States.

Rubinstein is one of a small number of U.S. patients who have made the transition. Divo said that, for a variety of reasons, only about a quarter of his patients even consider switching. Dry powder inhalers are often more expensive than gas propellant inhalers. For some, dry powder isn't a good option because not all asthma or COPD sufferers can get their medications in this form. And dry powder inhalers aren't recommended for young children or elderly patients with diminished lung strength.

Also, some patients using dry powder inhalers worry that without the noise from the spray, they may not be receiving the proper dose. Other patients don't like the taste powder inhalers can leave in their mouths.

Divo said his priority is making sure patients have an inhaler they are comfortable using and that they can afford. But, when appropriate, he'll keep offering the dry powder option.

Advocacy groups for asthma and COPD patients support more conversations about the connection between inhalers and climate change.

“The climate crisis makes these individuals have a higher risk of exacerbation and worsening disease,” said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association. “We don't want medications to contribute to that.”

Rizzo said there is work being done to make metered-dose inhalers more climate-friendly. The United States and many other countries are phasing down the use of hydrofluorocarbons, which are also used in refrigerators and air conditioners. It's part of the global attempt to avoid the worst possible impacts of climate change. But inhaler manufacturers are largely exempt from those requirements and can continue to use the gases while they explore new options.

Some leading inhaler manufacturers have pledged to produce canisters with less potent greenhouse gases and to submit them for regulatory review by next year. It's not clear when these inhalers might be available in pharmacies. Separately, the FDA is spending about $6 million on a study about the challenges of developing inhalers with a smaller carbon footprint.

Rizzo and other lung specialists worry these changes will translate into higher prices. That's what happened in the early to mid-2000s when ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were phased out of inhalers. Manufacturers changed the gas in metered-dose inhalers and the cost to patients nearly doubled. Today, many of those re-engineered inhalers remain expensive.

William Feldman, a pulmonologist and health policy researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said these dramatic price increases occur because manufacturers register updated inhalers as new products, even though they deliver medications already on the market. The manufacturers are then awarded patents, which prevent the production of competing generic medications for decades. The Federal Trade Commission says it is cracking down on this practice.

After the CFC ban, “manufacturers earned billions of dollars from the inhalers,” Feldman said of the re-engineered inhalers.

When inhaler costs went up, physicians say, patients cut back on puffs and suffered more asthma attacks. Gregg Furie, medical director for climate and sustainability at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is worried that's about to happen again.

“While these new propellants are potentially a real positive development, there's also a significant risk that we're going to see patients and payers face significant cost hikes,” Furie said.

Some of the largest inhaler manufacturers, including GSK, are already under scrutiny for allegedly inflating prices in the United States. Sydney Dodson-Nease told NPR and KFF Health News that the company has a strong record for keeping medicines accessible to patients but that it's too early to comment on the price of the more environmentally sensitive inhalers the company is developing.

Developing affordable, effective, and climate-friendly inhalers will be important for hospitals as well as patients. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality recommends that hospitals looking to shrink their carbon footprint reduce inhaler emissions. Some hospital administrators see switching inhalers as low-hanging fruit on the list of climate-change improvements a hospital might make.

But Brian Chesebro, medical director of environmental stewardship at Providence, a hospital network in Oregon, said, “It's not as easy as swapping inhalers.”

Chesebro said that even among metered-dose inhalers, the climate impact varies. So pharmacists should suggest the inhalers with the fewest greenhouse gas emissions. Insurers should also adjust reimbursements to favor climate-friendly alternatives, he said, and regulators could consider emissions when reviewing hospital performance.

Samantha Green, a family physician in Toronto, said clinicians can make a big difference with inhaler emissions by starting with the question: Does the patient in front of me really need one?

Green, who works on a project to make inhalers more environmentally sustainable, said that research shows a third of adults diagnosed with asthma may not have the disease.

“So that's an easy place to start,” Green said. “Make sure the patient prescribed an inhaler is actually benefiting from it.”

Green said educating patients has a measurable effect. In her experience, patients are moved to learn that emissions from the approximately 200 puffs in one inhaler are equivalent to driving about 100 miles in a gas-powered car. Some researchers say switching to dry powder inhalers may be as beneficial for the climate as a patient adopting a vegetarian diet.

One of the hospitals in Green's health care network, St. Joseph's Health Centre, found that talking to patients about inhalers led to a significant decrease in the use of metered-dose devices. Over six months, the hospital went from 70% of patients using the puffers, to 30%.

Green said patients who switched to dry powder inhalers have largely stuck with them and appreciate using a device that is less likely to exacerbate environmental conditions that inflame asthma.

This article is from a partnership that includes WBUR, NPR, and KFF Health News.

——————————
By: Martha Bebinger, WBUR
Title: Could Better Inhalers Help Patients, and the Planet?
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/inhalers-environmentally-friendly-planet-dry-powder-climate-changer/
Published Date: Mon, 06 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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Kaiser Health News

Journalists Delve Into Climate Change, Medicaid ‘Unwinding,’ and the Gap in Mortality Rates

Published

2 days ago

May 4, 2024

Staff Editor

Sat, 04 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

KFF Health News senior correspondent Samantha Young discussed Medicaid and climate change on KCBS Radio's “On-Demand” podcast on April 29.

Click here to hear Young on KCBS
Read Young's “AC, Power Banks, Mini Fridges: Oregon Equips Medicaid Patients for Climate Change“

KFF Health News contributor Andy Miller discussed Medicaid unwinding on WUGA's “The Georgia Health Report” on April 26.

Click here to hear Miller on “The Georgia Health Report”
Read Phil Galewitz' “Millions Were Booted From Medicaid. The Insurers That Run It Gained Medicaid Revenue Anyway.“

KFF Health News Nevada correspondent Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez discussed mortality rates in rural America on The Daily Yonder's “The Yonder Report” on April 24.

——————————
Title: Journalists Delve Into Climate Change, Medicaid ‘Unwinding,' and the Gap in Mortality Rates
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/journalists-delve-into-climate-change-medicaid-unwinding-and-the-gap-in-mortality-rates/
Published Date: Sat, 04 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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