Project Veritas on Wednesday released video of a Louisiana Department of Health whistleblower claiming Covid cases were inflated for profit.
Jeanne Stagg, a whistleblower who worked in Inpatient Utilization Management told Project Veritas that she witnessed cases coded as Covid that should not have Covid listed as the “primary diagnosis.”
“I’ve tried to raise awareness to my leadership and even with the Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Department, and it just kind of fell on deaf ears,” she told Project Veritas.
“Now, this is not specific to COVID-19. This is every single hospital admission. We’re not allowed to do medical necessity review. So, it gives the hospitals free reign to admit anything they want. Code it however they want,” said the whistleblower.
Stagg told Project Veritas that for example, a person who went in for multiple gunshot wounds was coded as Covid.
Project Veritas reported:
A source who works for United Healthcare of Louisiana’s Inpatient Utilization Management Department is blowing the whistle on COVID-19 cases possibly being inflated for financial incentive. The brazen instance of such potential abuse was a patient who had multiple gunshot wounds with his primary diagnosis listed as COVID-19.
United Healthcare of Louisiana is the states’ Medicaid arm, and as the whistleblower Jeanne Stagg points out in a conversation with the Chief Medical Officer of United Healthcare of Louisiana, Dr. Julie Morial, there are several financial incentives for hospitals to prefer to code patients as COVID-19 hospitalizations.
“Well maybe that’s… maybe that’s driving some of the motivation,” said Dr. Morial before stating that the Medicaid rate for reimbursement of COVID-19 patients is both higher and faster.
Project Veritas also published footage of a leadership call within United Healthcare of Louisiana wherein the whistleblower’s attempt to discuss the improper primary diagnoses she is seeing was dismissed.
A major element of this story is the fact that recent actions by public officials have allowed the problem to persist, and the whistleblower believes erroneous codes could be the cause of COVID-19 spikes which influence major public health decisions.
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