Countering Fraud

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October is NHS Fraud Awareness Month

NHS Fraud Awareness Month runs throughout October across England and Wales.  Its aim is to educate anyone who works in or uses the NHS about how damaging fraud can be and highlight some simple things that can be done to stop it.

The NHS is the world’s largest publicly funded health service and has accountability for the money it receives and a duty to ensure it is spent to best effect. With more than 1.5 million staff and hundreds of separate health bodies, hospitals and agencies, it is a vast system and protecting its resources a huge responsibility.

Fraud against the NHS is a drain on the valuable assets meant for patient care and costs the health service hundreds of millions of pounds. Types of fraud and offenders vary: for example, patients may avoid paying prescription charges by falsely claiming exemptions; staff may gain employment with false documentation, or claim pay for shifts they did not work; contractors may exaggerate or falsify records of NHS work. However, it is understood that fraud prevents health services from being run in the best possible way and impacts on staff and resources. NHS Fraud Awareness Month is an opportunity to inform NHS staff and patients about these issues and – importantly – who to contact if they have a concern about fraud in the health service.

Each health body has its own Local Counter Fraud Specialist (LCFS) who is responsible for overseeing its fraud-proofing measures, studying the financial comings and goings, looking for anything suspicious, raising awareness of the issues and investigating suspicions of fraud.

The work of LCFSs and the NHS CFS has already recovered tens of millions of pounds of NHS money and led to many fraudsters being prosecuted. However, to assist these efforts to reduce losses to fraud, we need the help and support of every honest person who works in and uses the NHS. By knowing how to recognise and report any fraud that does occur, we can all help to ensure that the public funds of the NHS are spent on patient care – which, after all, is what the health service was created for, 60 years ago.

If you have a concern about NHS fraud contact:

Gareth Robins 0208 869 7462 / 07825 450 259 , Gareth.robins@parkhill.org.uk

or call the confidential NHS Fraud and Corruption Reporting Line on (freephone) 0800 028 40 60.