Word: kusserow
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Richard Kusserow is a new kind of gumshoe. He is the master datatective of the Reagan Administration. Soon after becoming inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services in 1981, Kusserow decided to crack down on fraud. The new boss directed that the agency's mammoth IBM computer system be used to compare a list of everyone on the Social Security rolls with a compilation of every Medicare recipient known to have died. The project uncovered 8,000 dead people to whom Social Security checks were still being mailed, like clockwork, once a month. In some cases...
...Kusserow's search -- one of thousands of computer matching projects conducted by the Administration -- points up the power and the perils of computer data banks. Removing the deceased from the Social Security rolls has saved taxpayers about $50 million and led to more than 500 convictions for fraud. But to ferret out the cheats, the computer had to open and examine, however briefly, the records of more than 30 million presumably innocent Americans. That, say civil libertarians on both sides of the political spectrum, is an invasion of privacy and comes perilously close to violating the Constitution, particularly the Fourth...
...probation on 2,396 errant practitioners, an increase of 44% since 1981. Doctors, wandering through ethical thickets freshly grown from a technology that gives them daunting new powers over life and death, are held in low esteem by many who see them as self-serving money chasers. Dr. Richard Kusserow, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, claims that physicians' peer- review boards, out of concern for the profession's good name, tend to sweep ethics complaints under the rug. "They protect each other's incompetency from the public," he says...
...shocking about the cases of Lopez, Balasco and Mamay is that their transgressions were ignored or smoothed over by fellow doctors, including those who are directly responsible for policing the profession. Looking the other way is an unfortunate but time-honored tradition within the medical fraternity. Says Dr. Richard Kusserow, Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): "We have long had a mystical society of physicians; they protect each other's incompetency from the public...
...major report due to be released next month by the Inspector General's office recommends drawing that net tighter. It calls for more cooperation between state boards and the Federal Government and urges higher medical licensing fees to provide more money for enforcement. Kusserow also favors legal immunity for doctors who report incompetent colleagues. Says he: "They need protection from being sued." Galusha would like to see more pressure on hospitals to inform state boards of any internal disciplinary actions. "There should be civil penalties against hospitals if they do not report," he says. Reformers like Sidney Wolfe...