Our July Health TechNet meeting focused on new devices, software and techniques being used in the public and private sector to find and prevent waste, fraud and abuse.
The meeting featured the presentation of Jean MacQuarrie, Vice President, Thomson Reuters who is a nationally recognized fraud expert who has testified before Congress. Ms. MacQuarrie provided us with an overview on how detecting and investigating health care fraud, waste and abuse is a critical component of managing costs and improving quality in any government agency or private healthcare enterprise, and is an area of special emphasis under the new healthcare reform legislation. Ms. MacQuarrie's fraud and abuse team has implemented healthcare data warehouses and other solutions in support of CMS, such as Program Safeguard Contractors (PSCs), Zone Program Integrity Contractors (ZPICs), Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs), Medicare Drug Integrity Contractors (MEDICs), the One Program Integrity (One PI) project, the Pricing, Data Analysis, and Coding (PDAC) contract, the Statistical Analysis Center, Pay for Performance, Chronic Care Improvement and Medicare Advantage.
Further updates on unfolding regulations under the healthcare reform bill, and discussions about trends and developments of interest to the health technology industry were also provided.
The presentation of the speaker was followed by an active discussion among our members.