Voice Verification for Eligibility Verification
Nichols, R. "Voice Verification Technology Deployed to Prevent Abuse of Florida's
Medicaid Services." May 6, 2010. Retrieved February 25, 2011 from:
http://www.govtech.com/health/Voice-Verification-Technology-Deployed-to-Prevent.html.
The focus of this article is the prevention of Medicaid program abuse through the use of voice identification technology. There is no shortage of abuse throughout the federal and state medical assistance programs in the United States. Among other things, service providers sometimes bill for services never actually rendered, or they bill for more services than they render, or they show up to beneficiaries' homes but do not stay there long enough to render the required services. The taxpayers inevitably end up paying for these services and the beneficiaries are harmed by the fact that they receive less medical care than that to which they are entitled to receive under various state and federally funded programs. The voice verification technology proposal would directly address those problems by providing an accurate means of confirming that scheduled medical service providers actually show up and deliver the scheduled services.
Author's Main Points
The authors' main points are that Medicaid abuse is rampant in Florida and in other states and that there is a specific need to improve mechanisms for verifying that the scheduled services are actually provided by the service providers scheduled to deliver them to beneficiaries. Voice verification technology systems are capable of enabling state and federal programs to confirm the identity of medical service providers such as home health care workers and home health aides. In principle, the assigned service provider would simply check into the system by telephone on arrival at patient's homes and then checkout at the conclusion of the session.
Article Relevance to Medical Practice
The article is relevant to medical practice in general because government medical assistance programs are subject to high rates of fraud, waste, and abuse. Those elements of the current system contribute substantially to the healthcare crisis in the U.S. because they represent a tremendous drain on resources. These types of verification technologies are also relevant to medical practice in connection with the increasing need for efficiency and accuracy in medical billing, records, and safeguarding of protected healthcare information. The other capabilities of these types of systems include enhancement of billing procedures and the capabilities of tracking treatments and care plans remotely online via the Internet.
