$20B in Psychiatric Fraud Needs Government Oversight and Patient Protections

CCHR’s series of articles on mental health funding aims to assist legislators and law enforcement, as it isolates how funding has helped enable massive psychiatric fraud that harms patients’ mental health. For more information go to: https://www.cchrint.org/2023/02/17/20-billion-in-psychiatric-fraud/

Citizens Commission on Human Rights International 6616 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90028, United States Website https://www.cchrint.org Phone +1-323-467-4242 Email media@cchr.org

Fraud mental health law enforcement agencies billed CCHR investigate Patient Psychiatric Fraud psychiatrist report year

Citizens Commission on Human Rights International 6616 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90028, United States Website https://www.cchrint.org Phone +1-323-467-4242 Email media@cchr.org

Fraud mental health law enforcement agencies billed CCHR investigate Patient Psychiatric Fraud psychiatrist report year

$20B in Psychiatric
Fraud Needs
Government Oversight
and Patient Protections
In a series of articles being compiled as a report for policymakers and law enforcement
agencies, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) has
documented psychiatry’s promises to improve mental health—promises that have
repeatedly failed to deliver positive results.
The U.S. has lost $20 billion a year due to fraudulent
practices in the mental health sector. Attorney
Matthew Curley said, “[E]nforcement actions and
recoveries regarding behavioral health providers are
becoming increasingly significant components of the
government’s overall enforcement efforts.”
Fraud- or theft-related crimes account for the 2nd largest part of all the crimes in the mental health
industry. A Journal of Medical Ethics study found, “A typical fraudster’s profile is defined as a 53-year-old
male psychiatrist who victimizes one or two of the largest federal insurance programs.”
The researchers also found that patients are
typically billed for more time than the psychiatrist
actually spent with them or for procedures not
performed. Patients are kept against their will until
their health insurance expires just to keep the
hospital beds filled.
According to Richard Kusserow, who served for 11 years as the U.S. Health and Human
Services Inspector General, “Many health care fraud investigators believe mental health
caregivers, such as psychiatrists and psychologists, have the worst fraud record of all
medical disciplines.”
Mark Schlein, former director of Florida’s
Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, when
investigating massive mental health
fraud in the 1990s commented: “The
extent of the fraud is limited only by the
imagination.”
Recent examples of ongoing deceitful imagination include two psychologists who
were convicted of billing for services to patients that were dead. Two
psychiatrists billed for services and visits that never occurred.
Other fraudulent schemes include patients
being picked up by a bus and taken out for a
meal which is then billed as a psychiatric
evaluation, and spending all day watching TV
or playing games at a facility which is billed as
group psychotherapy.
In 1998, CCHR produced a report on psychiatric fraud, which was released in
New York to healthcare fraud investigators and representatives of the attorneys
general offices, other law enforcement agencies, and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.
Since the early 1990s, CCHR has
tracked mental healthcare fraud
schemes, especially in for-profit
psychiatric hospitals, and has provided
evidence to law enforcement agencies
to investigate.
CCHR advises families who have a member that was informed that a
chemical imbalance caused their mental disorder, which led them to accept
treatment that harmed them, to report this to CCHR.
They should also report any treatments
they were told were “safe and effective,”
but caused them serious physical damage,
including brain damage that
electroconvulsive therapy (electroshock)
causes.
Find Out More At https://www.cchrint.org