By Dr. Mehmet Oz, CMS Administrator, and Mary Lazare, ACL Principal Deputy Administrator
June 1–5 is Medicare Fraud Prevention Week. Here’s How Americans Can Help Protect Themselves and Medicare.
June 1 marked the start of Medicare Fraud Prevention Week. While this week shines a spotlight on fraud prevention, protecting Medicare is a year-round mission.
As the leaders of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Administration for Community Living (ACL), we know that protecting taxpayer dollars and safeguarding beneficiaries requires constant vigilance across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) every day of the year.
In 2025 alone, CMS suspended more than $5.7 billion in suspicious payments and launched investigations into thousands of potentially fraudulent Medicare providers and suppliers. This year, CMS has suspended Medicare payments to hundreds of potentially fraudulent hospice providers pending further review.
CMS also recently issued nationwide moratoria on new Medicare enrollments for hospices, home health agencies, and durable medical equipment suppliers while we develop stronger safeguards to prevent bad actors from exploiting the system. Existing providers will continue delivering these vital services to beneficiaries while CMS closes off pathways for new fraudsters to enter the program.
As a partner in the Medicare fraud fight, ACL supports a national network of grantees and team members — many of them volunteers — known as the Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP). The SMPs provide free, unbiased, one-on-one assistance to Medicare enrollees, their families, and caregivers to help people identify potential fraud, review billing concerns, and report suspected scams. They are the local connection between Medicare and the older adults and people with disabilities who rely on it for their health care.
Annually, the SMPs reach almost 2.5 million people through community outreach and education, and help more than 300,000 people, one-on-one, navigate their Medicare questions and concerns. SMP team members contribute more than 550,000 hours to the program each year, much of it spent helping individuals identify and report suspected fraud. In one example from 2024, an SMP helped identify a doctor who was signing orders for genetic testing and durable medical equipment without seeing, speaking to, or otherwise treating patients — resulting in an arrest, a conviction, and a judgment of more than $35 million to be repaid to Medicare.
Although HHS works to combat fraud every day of the year, Medicare Fraud Prevention Week is an important opportunity to remind beneficiaries, families, and the public how to recognize and report scams — and why it matters.
The stakes are real: protecting Medicare means protecting access to care for today’s beneficiaries and preserving the program for future generations. Fraud erodes the public trust that sustains these programs, increases the burden on taxpayers, and harms vulnerable Americans by diverting resources away from legitimate care.
The scope of some schemes can be staggering. One provider billed Medicare over $9 million for 7,200 skin substitute bandages over a three-month period — for a single patient — with no doctor visits, no documented wound, and no related prescriptions in the record. Another provider claimed that a patient used 20 catheters a day for three months, billing Medicare $19,000 — but when we contacted the patient, he told us he didn’t use catheters at all.
The harm isn’t only financial. Beneficiaries enrolled in hospice programs without their consent lose access to regular benefits and face a difficult process to have them restored. In one case identified by the California SMP, a beneficiary’s lifesaving surgery was canceled due to a fraudulent hospice enrollment. In another, an elderly patient in the Los Angeles area died after being neglected by fraudulent hospice operators. These are real consequences for real people and their families.
CMS and HHS will continue pursuing these abuses, but we need your help. People with Medicare and their families are the first line of defense against health care fraud.
Here’s how you can get involved:
- Ignore, delete, and block. Don’t respond to unsolicited texts or emails offering free medical services or supplies.
- Guard your card. Only share your Medicare number with trusted health care providers. Anyone offering prepaid debit cards or other incentives in exchange for your number is attempting fraud.
- Review your statements carefully. Make sure no one is billing Medicare for services you didn’t receive.
- Report suspected fraud. Call 1-800-MEDICARE, or reach your local Senior Medicare Patrol at 1-877-808-2468.
We thank the SMP team members for their dedication in helping beneficiaries detect, prevent, and report fraud in their communities. Together — with the support of the SMPs and the public — we can protect Medicare for the people who depend on it today and for the generations who will rely on it tomorrow.