(Toronto, ON) – The Canadian Health Care Anti-fraud Association today announced the signing of a formal Memorandum of Understanding with two like-minded organizations—the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) and the European Healthcare Fraud and Corruption Network (EHFCN). All three organizations share the common goal of reducing and eliminating health care fraud in their respective jurisdictions, as well as globally.
Health care fraud is a serious problem, with a staggering price tag estimated between $3 billion and $15 billion annually in Canada alone. Our counterparts in the United States and Europe can also attest to the devastating effects of health care fraud on their health systems. Every dollar lost to health care fraud represents a hit to the quality and availability of health care for Canadians who actually need it. “It’s like death by a thousand cuts,” says CHCAA Executive Director Joel Alleyne.
Health care fraud schemes have become exportable, and fraud trends are becoming increasingly similar from country to country. These schemes continue to grow in their complexity and represent a multi-billion dollar cost to health care and benefit payers world – wide. Our evolving global health care landscape creates a heightened need for international cooperation between entities dedicated to addressing this problem.
The signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between CHCAA, NHCAA, and EHFCN represents the launching of an international Network of health care counter – fraud organizations that are engaged in the prevention, detection, investigation, and prosecution of health care fraud.
In describing the value of this effort, Diane Geddes, 2009 Chair of the CHCAA Board of Directors explains: “The most valuable aspect of partnerships like this is the opportunity to create a network of health care anti-fraud professionals whose collective knowledge and experience can be leveraged to improve best practices around fraud prevention, detection, and investigation, with a view to protect the scarce health care resources in Canada and around the globe.”
Through strategic partnerships, the Network intends to raise awareness internationally about the issue of health care fraud while gathering and sharing information on the trends, issues, facts, and figures relating to the problem. In addition, the Network will cooperatively work to improve international standards of practice around fraud prevention, detection, investigation, and prosecution. This includes the development of training programs offered as joint educational efforts among the participating organizations to bolster and prepare the world’s health care anti-fraud professionals.
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The Canadian Health Care Anti-fraud Association (CHCAA) – Founded in 2000 to give a voice to the public and private sector health care organizations interested in preventing fraud in the Canadian health care environment. The CHCAA’s Vision is to improve the Canadian Health Care environment by eliminating health care fraud and its Mission is to combat health care fraud and assist in restoring the integrity of the Canadian health care system. One of the key objectives of the CHCAA is to build public, private, national and international partnerships with insurance carriers, service providers, law enforcement, health regulatory bodies, consumer groups and provider associations to protect the Canadian health care system from fraud.
The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) – Established in 1985 by several private health insurers and federal and state government officials, NHCAA is the only national U.S. organization devoted exclusively to combating health care fraud. NHCAA’s mission is to protect and serve the public interest by raising awareness and improving the detection, investigation, prosecution and prevention of health care fraud. Since its founding, NHCAA has remained a private-public partnership with its members comprising the nation’s most prominent private health insurers as well as those Federal, state and local government law enforcement and regulatory agencies having jurisdiction over health care fraud.
The European Healthcare Fraud and Corruption Network (EHFCN) – Established formally in 2005 to coordinate and advance efforts to counter healthcare fraud and corruption in Europe. The Network is a not-for-profit organisation based in Brussels and is the only European organisation dedicated to combating healthcare fraud and corruption across Europe with its primary objective being to reduce fraud and corruption in healthcare throughout Europe. The member organisations of EHFCN provide healthcare services to about 400 million people in Europe and by working together, its members aim to fraud-proof European healthcare systems and release billions of Euros from fraud, bringing it back to healthcare services.
