ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some of the significant attempts by departments, agencies and other local and public authorities to deal with fraud and corruption. Practitioner fraud was one of the key areas tackled by the NHS Counter Fraud service when it was set up in 1998. All practitioner service claims and allowances passed through Family Practitioner Committees, who kept the employment records and contracts for practitioners, but the claims for payment to each committee formed part of a national payment service in respect of prescriptions and dentists. The NHS Counter Fraud Service and its successor NHS Protect would argue that in the last decade they have had a visible impact in reducing contract practitioner fraud in particular. At the other end of the scale, NHS Protect has stated that it does not recognise the report's figures and places the likely level of fraud against the NHS considerably lower.
