“As government agencies shape their goals and priorities for the new administration, they continue to target waste, fraud, and abuse. Rob Owens, deputy inspector general for Management and Policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), explained this week how HHS is targeting waste, fraud, and abuse by utilizing geospatial analytics and visualization as part of a Geographic Information System (GIS).”
“The experience, according to Owens, has been both positive and negative, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Recently, HHS developed and deployed the GEOHub, a GIS system which supports the agency’s geospatial analytics and visualization. With this tool, the agency can show stakeholders the impact of their work using this data.”
“’What we call data at the fingertips, for our external stakeholders can help detect and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in HHS programs,’ said Owens.”
“The first thing displayed on the GEOHub application is a story map about the behavioral health medication-assisted treatment viewer. The interactive story map allows users to explore data related to the opioid epidemic, and there’s also a geospatial tool for the agency’s COVID-19 work.”
“While working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), HHS developed geospatial analysis to find fraud patterns during the pandemic. For example, if a health care provider performs an impossible amount of work, GIS can track if the work was completed within an appropriate location. In addition, when somebody creates a digital transaction through CMS, there’s metadata that gets also gets created through that transaction, and that’s what HHS used to gather data from the transactions to find waste and abuse potential…” Read the full article here.
Source: HHS Utilizing GIS to Target Waste, Fraud, and Abuse – By Lisbeth Perez, June 15, 2021. MeriTalk.
