TASK FORCE TARGETS MEDICAID FRAUD

Medicaid fraud consisting of financial abuses by doctors, providers and patients will be targeted by a new 10-member fraud unit being formed in North Carolina.

“We have to ensure that every Medicaid dollar is well spent,” Allen Dobson, a top assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Med-icaid told the Winston-Salem Journal. “The taxpayers of this state need to know that we are taking waste seriously.”

Medicaid is the government health insurance program for 1.5 million low-income children, elderly and the disabled in North Carolina. The state’s share of Medicaid spending totaled $2.3 billion last year.

Dobson said members of the new Medicaid fraud unit will look into allegations of fraud, scrutinize billing records and make personal visits to providers whose numbers sound off-base.