Firm News
Partner Jody Erdfarb Quoted in HealthLeaders on Financial Audits Within the Health Care Systems
On January 27, 2022, Partner Jody Erdfarb was quoted in the HealthLeaders‘ article titled, “2022 Will Be Year of Accounting for Pandemic Relief Spending.” The article discusses the increased focus on financial audits that the Biden Administration has imposed to determine how and where hospitals and health care systems spent the COVID-19 money they received.
Jody explains that the federal government will need to practice a level of empathy and compassion as they begin the investigations saying, “The way that the healthcare industry and government enforcement happens right now, there are mechanisms to self-disclose, but even . . . they’re punitive, under the OIG self-disclosure protocol, there’s a 1.5 times multiplier on penalties, even if it’s a totally innocent mistake.”
Jody goes on to explain how the changing landscape surrounding the health care industry brings many new challenges to the surface such as loss in workforce and fraud fears.
“The best thing you could do is to find potential problems yourself and fix them in real time. If you can fix them within a year, then you don’t even have to file self-disclosure. If you can self-audit, the better off you’re going to be,” Erdfarb concludes.
To read the article, click here.
