PracticeCare

Ericka Adler on Employee Theft, Employee Fraud and What You Can Do

Episode Summary

Ericka Adler is a healthcare attorney, a shareholder at Roetzel in their Chicago office, and the Practice Group Manager of Roetzel's healthcare practice. Ericka has nearly 25 years representing individual providers, physician groups, and other health care entities such as home health care agencies, DME companies, hospices, MRI facilities, and surgery centers. She focuses her practice on regulatory and transactional health care law, in compliance counseling, structuring, and implementing complex joint ventures to comply with state and federal laws and regulations. Ericka handles mergers, sales and acquisitions of healthcare entities and has extensive experience in completing transactions with private equity, hospitals and other third parties. Ericka has deep experience dealing with Stark, Anti-Kickback Statute, Fee splitting concerns, the corporate practice of medicine, and other challenges facing healthcare providers. She also hosts a weekly podcast, "Roetzel HealthLaw Hotspot®, which has earned the #5 spot on Health Radio Now.

Episode Notes

Ericka Adler is a healthcare attorney, a shareholder at Roetzel in their Chicago office, and the Practice Group Manager of Roetzel's healthcare practice. Ericka has nearly 25 years representing individual providers, physician groups, and other health care entities such as home health care agencies, DME companies, hospices, MRI facilities, and surgery centers. She focuses her practice on regulatory and transactional health care law, in compliance counseling, structuring, and implementing complex joint ventures to comply with state and federal laws and regulations. Ericka handles mergers, sales and acquisitions of healthcare entities and has extensive experience in completing transactions with private equity, hospitals and other third parties. Ericka has deep experience dealing with Stark, Anti-Kickback Statute, Fee splitting concerns, the corporate practice of medicine, and other challenges facing healthcare providers. She also hosts a weekly podcast, "Roetzel HealthLaw Hotspot®, which has earned the #5 spot on Health Radio Now.

In this episode, Carl White and Ericka Adler discuss:

• The typical situations when it comes to employee theft and employee fraud
• How to discover employee theft or mismanagement in your practice
• Limiting and managing access to important aspects of your business
• Discovering weak points in your practice where employees can get in when they shouldn’t be able to.

Key Takeaways: 

• When somebody is stealing, it’s often somebody you don’t suspect and is probably the person you trust the most. Often times, something changes - in their life for example - that triggers someone to steal. You might even feel guilty for asking that person questions. 
• The best way to discover employee theft or employee fraud is by bringing in somebody from the outside. Do a yearly billing audit. If anyone is reluctant or hostile about the audit, that’ll be one of your first red flags.
• Make sure you have access to your passwords, files, finances, sites, social media and other important documents and properties. If one person should have control over all these things, it has to be the owner or else it has to be managed by a lot of people to ensure accountability and transparency. 
• Look around your business, what are the things that have worried you but you figured you’ll get to it when you get to it? These things that worry you may be some of the current weakness points in your practice and it’s best to fix the situation before thefts, fraud, or dishonesty even happen. 

“The most serious situations that we face typically involve very long term employees. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have a loyal person working for you for all those years, something typically changes and it can be very difficult to discover.” - Ericka Adler

Connect with Ericka Adler:

Website: https://www.ralaw.com

Email: eadler@ralaw.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericka-adler-87a2a93/ | https://www.linkedin.com/company/roetzel-&-andress/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/modernhealthlaw | https://twitter.com/roetzel_andress

Connect with Carl White: 

Website: www.marketvisorygroup.com  

Email:  whitec@marketvisorygroup.com

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/marketvisorygroup

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD9BLCu_i2ezBj1ktUHVmig

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/healthcaremktg/