Virginia Insurance Fraud Arrests Going Up
Written by Daniel Phillips on March 26, 2012 – 9:39 amThe Virginia State Police (VSP) insurance fraud program just released their 2011 Annual Report, which shows the number of arrests for insurance fraud and other related crimes, such as arson and forgery increased eight percent over 2010.
Since 1999, more than 4,000 fraud investigations have been undertaken and special agents have made a total of 2,185 arrests.
In 2011, the department made 231 arrests with 91 cases presented to the commonwealth’s attorneys and 143 cases adjudicated in 2011 – an increase for the third year in a row.
As required by Virginia law, the VSP investigates suspected fraud in property and casualty lines of insurance, as well as suspected workers’ compensation fraud. The 2011 statistics show 1,259 property fraud-related notifications were received. Of the 627 notifications received involving injury and casualty fraud, 146 were for fraudulent workers’ compensation claims.
In 2011, the courts ordered restitution of more than $148,000. Court-o
Tags: Arrests, Insurance Fraud
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Wayne Pontin is new AMII chairman
Written by Daniel Phillips on March 19, 2012 – 5:14 pmAt the Annual General Meeting today of The Association of Medical Insurance Intermediaries (AMII), Wayne Pontin was appointed chairman.
Pontin was a member of the AMII executive committee from 2007 to 2010 and is currently Sales Director (West) of Jelf Employee Benefits. He succeeds Andrew Tripp, who has been AMII’s chairman for the last two years.
Tripp also steps down from the executive committee having been a member since March 2007, including serving as AMII’s treasurer.
Other AMII changes include the appointment of Brian Walters from Regency Health as vice chair and two new committee members, Stuart Scullion from The Private Health Partnership and Sue Smith from Health Care Plus.
Debbie Kleiner Gaines from Best Health UK remains treasurer for a further year. Also, continuing on the Executive Committee are Lindsey Joseph from LEBC Corporate Healthcare Solution; Hazel Gregory from Medical Insurance Services; and Graeme Godfrey of Best Go Private.
In addition, Liz Nualls, business relationship manager of Aviva Health joins the executive committee for a two-year period as the insurer representative.
Mike Wagg from Simplyhealth has stepped down from the role of Insurer Representative after completing his two year term, and John Miller from Bell Healthcare and Isobel Skeates from Direct Healthline have stepped down as executive committee members after completing their three-year terms of office.
Following his appointment, Pontin said, “AMII must be the accepted voice of the healthcare industry both within trade circles and the political environment, and to achieve the latter the Association has to work alongside BIBA. It is
Tags: Chairman, Wayne Pontin
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Helping Your Kids with Emotional Issues
Written by Daniel Phillips on March 9, 2012 – 5:04 pmMost parents are not aware of the kinds of things that can affect your children emotionally. If you are not in tune with your kids, then they might be having some emotional problems that you are not even aware of. Then, when you finally find out about their issues, it usually is to a point where they start to show outwardly the things that have been going on inside of them for a long time. When these kinds of things happen, you might not feel prepared to take care of these things, but there are a few things that you can do to try and help your children when they are going through hard times in their young lives.
Making Them Comfortable
The best thing you can do to get your children to open up to you about what is going on with them is to make them comfortable. If a young person feels like you are coercing them to talk, then they are likely to pull further inward, and you will not be able to get anything out of them. Therefore, when you find that you need to have a heart to heart with your kids, there are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind.
Tags: Emotional, Emotional Issues
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Viewpoints: WSJ On Super Tuesday; Zeke Emanuel, NY Times On Electronic Health Records; Iowa High-Risk Pool Concerns
Written by Daniel Phillips on March 6, 2012 – 9:57 amThe Wall Street Journal: Republican Split Decision Mr. Santorum is also scoring on the stump with his warnings about the threat to freedom posed by ObamaCare. Especially if the economy improves, this will be a crucial issue for Republicans in November because it reflects the great American fault line over the role of government. Yet the issue has bedeviled Mr. Romney’s because of his refusal to distance himself from RomneyCare in Massachusetts and to say more than his cursory line that he’ll “repeal ObamaCare” (3/8).
Reuters: An Unsung Victory In Healthcare It’s now been a year since the administration released the regulations specifying meaningful use and what it takes to be certified — the nuts and bolts of implementing the law. The results have been nothing short of spectacular. As of December 2011, the use of EHR among office-based physicians has nearly doubled to 34 percent with e-prescribing exceeding 40 percent. … Go
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