Medicare paid $520 million to Miami-Dade home healthcare agencies for treating diabetic patients, more than what the agency spent in the rest of the country combined, federal investigators tell the Miami Herald. The investigators suspect the disproportionate amount of Medicare dollars spent in Miami-Dade in 2008 is fraudulent because the county is home to just 2 percent of the nation’s diabetic patients eligible for the federal program.
The money may have been misspent in two areas: questionable claims for patients who either didn’t need twice-daily nursing services to inject their insulin or who didn’t actually have the diabetes. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General found that Miami-Dade providers accounted for just over half of the $1 billion that Medicare paid out nationally in 2008 for the treatment of homebound patients with diabetes and related illnesses.No other place comes close to Miami-Dade, which is dubbed the nation’s healthcare fraud capital.