(The Center Square) – Funds for Medicaid spent on autism centers has spiked in North Carolina, the state auditor told a legislative committee on Tuesday.
This comes as a growing number of states and the federal government uncovered or are investigating fraudulent or incorrect payments to autism centers.
“There has been a tremendous spike in the amount of money that Medicaid spends in that particular arena,” Republican first-term Auditor Dave Boliek told the joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Health and Human Services Tuesday. “Our team has begun a detailed look at that. That is one area that we identified that needed a really, really, really close look.”
Minnesota has been at the center of the fraud investigations, including on spending for autism centers.
Minnesota residents 21 years old or younger can receive services through the state’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program.
“Between 2019 and 2024, the number of EIDBI service providers increased from 41 to 328, a 700% increase,” according to a recent report from the U.S. House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform.
The cost to taxpayers increased from $20.4 million in 2019 to more than $342 million in 2024, the report said.
“The DOJ has revealed that fraudsters contacted parents in the Somali community to recruit their children to attend treatment centers and helped obtain fraudulent autism diagnoses,” the report states, referring to the Department of Justice. “The fraudsters paid monthly kickbacks to parents of enrolled children, with the amount ranging from $300 to $1,500 per month.”
There was also fraud in child nutrition programs, with nearly $300 million stolen from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal Child Nutrition Program, the report stated.
Another category of fraud was in child care subsidies, according to the congressional report.
Federal investigators found that child care centers in Minnesota had defrauded the federal government of at least $100 million in 2017 “through large-scale overbilling, money laundering, and kick-back schemes, in addition to providing substandard conditions for children,” the congressional report said.
A North Carolina legislator Tuesday asked Boliek specifically about fraud in child care funds in the state.
“The first thing we did in response to the reporting in Minnesota was to scan across our government to look for spikes,” the auditor said. “In the nutrition program, we did not see an immediate spike. That doesn’t mean that there are not some issues there, but we did not seek the type of spike that we did in Minnesota.”
