The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) announced that David S. Popik, Senior Director of the Special Investigations Unit for Florida Blue has been elected as the 2018 Chair of the NHCAA Board of Directors. Popik succeeds Rick E. Munson, Vice President of Investigations at UnitedHealthcare.

NHCAA would like to congratulate the winners of the 2017 NHCAA Awards Program: Investigation of the Year, Medical Directors, Excellence in Public Awareness and SIRIS Investigation of the Year.

On August 2, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the formation of an Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit as a new Department of Justice (DOJ) pilot program to “utilize data to help combat the devastating opioid crisis that is ravaging families and communities across America.” The new unit will focus on identifying and prosecuting people who contribute to the nation’s prescription opioid fraud and abuse epidemic.

Polish biotech firm Medicalgorithmics, three Texas-based diagnostic testing firms and one executive, Joseph Bogdan, of Fairview, Texas, agreed to a settlement of more than $13.4 million plus interest to resolve accusations that they violated the False Claims Act by submitting fraudulent claims to Medicare for overly expensive cardiac monitoring services, prosecutors say. AMI Monitoring and its affiliate Spectocor, based in McKinney, Texas, and Medi-Lynx Cardiac Monitoring in Plano, Texas, all...

On June 22, 2017, the Republican leadership of the United States Senate unveiled its much-anticipated health care reform bill, titled the “Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017.”