5 ways to minimize fraud in your health care plan

Train your team to recognize fraudulent documents. For example, “when you’re looking at [identification] issued by the federal government, you will normally have security features in each of those documents you should look for,” said Whitlock. “You can be found guilty of hiring an illegal alien and pay a very hefty price if you don’t verify the person you are hiring is actually a U.S. citizen. You need to be able to check the documents and authenticate them.”

Systematically test common upcoding against all bills. “Have a system, and if you don’t have one, hire an outside company to do it,” he said. “So many companies have this capability. … how good of a job they do is often dictated by what you ask for in the contract so negotiate a tough contract and demand they police upcoding and catch fraudulent activity.”