A whistleblower 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 incentives.

Jeanne Stagg, worked in Inpatient Utilization Management and said that she witnessed cases coded as Covid that should not have Covid listed as the “primary diagnosis.”

One example that she gave of such potential abuse was a patient who had multiple gunshot wounds but his primary diagnosis was listed as COVID-19.

“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,” the whistleblower said.

Stagg disclosed this information to Project Veritas who claim to, “investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions”. 

Stagg also told them that this is actually not specific to only COVID-19. “This is every single hospital admission,” she said “We’re not allowed to do medical necessity reviews” “So, it gives the hospitals free reign to admit anything they want. Code it however they want,” said the whistleblower.

Financial Incentives for “COVID” Hospitalisations

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 whistle-blowers’ 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.

Of course, the falsified coding or classification of deaths is not surprising, this has been reported since spring 2020 by family members of the deceased who had received death certificates with blatant falsified COVID classifications, despite dying from various other ailments.

What is surprising is that it is still continuing.