My employer is back in the news today with the Strib reporting that personal care agencies are still submitting fraudulent claims that are being paid by the Department of Human Services. This news comes about a year after a legislative auditor found numerous instances of fraud committed by PCA agencies. This might seem like a black eye for the agency, but a closer look at the numbers reveals that the paper might be engaged in a little hyperbole. The Strib, according to its own data, looked at 4,000,000 PCA claims. It found about 580 instances of PCA agencies billing for too many hours. That’s an error rate of about .01%. We launch space shuttles under a bigger margin of error. And yet the article’s tone implies that my colleagues are borderline incompetents who can’t do simple math.
Of course, government agencies should do everything within their power to eliminate fraud and abuse. But until PCA services are administered and delivered by robots (sexy, highly compliant robots), the human factor is going to introduce some element of error and fraud. And based on these numbers, government workers are doing a pretty good job of keeping the human factor in check.
