Suffolk County Council recovers over £500,000 in overpayments using NFI Mortality Screening
The National Fraud Initiative, run by the Cabinet Office, helps Suffolk County Council identify overpayments to private residential care homes relating to residents that had previously passed away, but the home had delayed notifying the Council. Suffolk County Council now use ReCheck, another successful National Fraud Initiative fraud detection product, every six months to proactively identify and stop these overpayments. Just under £600,000 has been recovered so far. SITUATION Suffolk County Council is the administrative authority for the county of Suffolk and is split into five distinct directorates. Each directorate has responsibility for a range of services and statutory requirements such as: adult social care, children’s social care and public health, fire services and public safety, highways and infrastructure and professional services. The council takes part in the two yearly National Fraud Initiative (NFI) data matching exercise run by the Cabinet Office. This fraud prevention and detection exercise helps local authorities, such as Suffolk County Council, find and tackle fraud in the public sector and protect vital public services. The NFI enables Suffolk County Council to identify payments to private care homes for residents that had previously passed away. It is important for the council to identify and stop these payments before they impact departmental funding and public services. SOLUTION ReCheck, from the Cabinet Office allows organisations to repeat the two yearly matching at a time to suit them. This allows for more frequent checks against data sets collected as part of the NFI to reduce fraud and error.