Workers Comp Fraud?

The New York Times ran an article a few weeks ago that a constituent sent me for comment. He wanted to know if the same fraud occurred in Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/business/some-physicians-making-millions-selling-drugs.html?smid=pl-share

In some states doctors providing care under workers compensation were running schemes that resulted in their making crazy money selling drugs directly to patients. You can read the article for details, but the question the article begs is “What about Washington?”

I rooted around a bit and found out that we stopped allowing this several years ago based on similar concerns. Running all the prescriptions through a single POS system allows us to track drug use, contraindications for multiple drugs, and to prevent fraud like what’s shown in this article.

I’m sure there are other ways inventive people come up with to scam the various state systems (Medicaid, Workers Comp, etc.), but we ride the data to try to prevent as much of it as we can.

 

Author: Ross

I am the Director of the Department of Early Learning for Washington State. I formerly represented the 48th Legislative District in the State House of Representatives, chairing the Appropriations committee and spent many a year at Microsoft.