< + > Healthcare’s Multi-Billion Dollar Fraud Problem Starts at the Front Door – And FaceTec is Closing It

Healthcare has an identity crisis. Literally, not figuratively. The system bleeds billions in fraud every year. Duplicate records sit in databases like ticking time bombs. We treat patient matching as a back-office headache. It is actually a clinical imperative. The stakes are simply too high to keep putting this on the back burner.

I recently sat down with Jay Meier, Chief Identity Technology Strategist at FaceTec. We discussed the severe challenges of patient matching and healthcare fraud. We explored how the company verifies identity using a person’s liveness, keeping data local and protecting patients.

What This Conversation Revealed

• Duplicate identity profiles cause patients to receive incorrect medical treatments. Hospitals can adopt FaceTec’s liveness verification at the point of care to prevent medical errors and reduce liability.
• Bad actors can bypass basic online portals using stolen pictures. With FaceTec, systems can require proof of a living human before allowing login access. This stops fraudulent transactions before they penetrate the network.
• Phantom claims drain Medicaid budgets when services are billed but not delivered. Providers and patients scan cryptographically signed identity codes together during the encounter. This generates an irrefutable timestamp proving the service actually occurred.

Treat Identity as a Patient Safety Imperative

Poor patient matching is a clinical danger. It goes far beyond administrative delays. “There are patients showing up and being linked to the wrong health identity. They are being treated for things that they don’t actually suffer from,” Meier explained.

The scale of the issue is massive. “A recent study said 18% of identity profiles in the US healthcare system are either duplicative or fraudulent,” said Meier.

Stop Digital Fraud at the Front Door

The United States healthcare system is a massive target for bad actors. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) estimated that the improper payment rate in Fiscal Year 2025 was $28.83 billion. While not all improper payments are fraudulent, a portion of that $billion number is directly related to fraud.

Static passwords are no longer enough. Even two-factor authentication is not enough.

“What Facetec’s “liveness” does is affirm that it is actually a living human being that is trying to do something online,” Meier stated. “If you can determine that it is not an actual living human being that’s doing this – ie: maybe it’s a video that’s been injected into the system or a picture [being held up to the camera], then there’s no reason to go any further. You can cancel the transaction at that point”.

Give Biometric Control Back to Patients

Centralized biometric databases make patients nervous. Storing face maps on corporate servers creates targets for hackers. A physical card with a secure UR code, from FaceTec, solves this problem.

“Because some people don’t like the idea of a massive company having your biometric data on file somewhere, the healthcare company can give you the QR code, put it on your health ID, so that you can present it and control your own biometric data,” explained Meier. “We call this QR code for identity a UR code and it means I have control of my own personal biometric information. It’s not in some database for somebody to steal.”

Crush Ghost Billing with Dual Verification

Healthcare bleeds money through phantom claims. Bad actors bill Medicaid for services like transportation that they never actually provide. “Well as was the case in Minnesota, there was no bus and the bus driver never showed up…and then the company would bill Medicaid for services that were never rendered,” Meier noted.

Scanning secure codes at the point of care fixes this blind spot. Meier gave the following example: “When the bus driver shows up at her [the patients’] house, he has to scan her UR code to confirms that she was there. When they get on the bus, he has to scan his own UR code that confirms that he was there driving the bus. This can be tokenized and everything is timestamped. We have irrefutable proof this service was rendered.”

The Reality

The reality? Trust does not come from complex security policies that annoy patients and staff. It comes from building a reliable, friction-free way to ensure the person across the screen is exactly who they claim to be. FaceTec offers such a solution – one based not just on facial scans – but on the actual liveness of a person that is stored locally and not in a centralized database.

FaceTec’s solution is by no means the only answer to healthcare’s identity challenge, but the fact their solution is implementation ready means there is one less excuse to delay investing in solving this challenge. To reduce costs and improve patient safety, patient identity needs to be moved up the priority ladder.

What Healthcare IT Leaders Are Asking

How does liveness technology differ from standard biometric logins?
Standard biometric logins often rely on stored device data that can be spoofed or bypassed. FaceTec’s liveness technology actively verifies that a real, living human is present at the exact moment of the transaction. It detects attempts to use photos, videos, or masks. This prevents bad actors from accessing patient portals even if they have stolen credentials.

Does using a UR code require a massive central biometric database?
No. A UR code encodes a small amount of biometric data and identity information directly into a cryptographically signed QR code. When scanned, the system compares the live face to the data stored within the code itself. This allows patients to maintain control of their biometric data without it being stored in a central, hackable repository.

How can verifiable identity prevent healthcare reimbursement fraud?
Fraud often occurs when bad actors bill for services that were never actually rendered. By requiring both the service provider and the patient to scan their unique identity codes at the point of care, health systems create a tokenized and timestamped record. This provides an irrefutable audit trail proving both parties were physically present for the encounter.

Learn more about FaceTec at https://www.facetec.com/

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Facetec is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

< + > Cultural Adaptation: Why Technical EHR Implementation is Only Half the Battle

The following is a guest article by Donna Palmer, RN, Manager of Professional Services at Juno Health

As easy as it is for hospital leaders and administrators to treat an electronic health record (EHR) implementation as a technological upgrade, a project of this magnitude impacts the facility’s culture and daily workflows in equal measure. To create a solution that works within your broader hospital culture, prioritize communication and multidisciplinary collaboration from day one to post-launch.

Communicate from Selection to Implementation

EHR implementations face challenges that go beyond the technical because the platform touches every function in the hospital and must answer diverse needs. That’s why the project can’t happen in a vacuum, and the lines of communication need to stay wide open from start to finish.

Pave the Way for Buy-In

Collaboration and change management are crucial as you work to overhaul your EHR. Depending on where you’re starting from—transitioning from paper or just improving fragmented processes—teams just want familiarity and often struggle to adapt.

Involving staff members from the beginning accounts for their needs so they don’t feel compelled to force old workflows into a new system. The challenge is that chief nursing officers and clinicians simply don’t have enough time in the day, and they’re often too busy seeing patients and passing meds to commit to an implementation project.

Follow a clear communication process to engage well before kickoff and keep employees informed across the project: 

• Ask for input across roles to understand workflow challenges and desired improvements
• Involve end users in viewing product demos to gather opinions about potential EHRs
• Host prelaunch town halls across shifts to enable nurses, social workers, and staff members in all roles to ask questions and stay informed

Close Cultural Barriers

Remember that your hospital employs and treats people from all walks of life. Because introducing a new EHR is more than a simple operational shift, it must also account for broader cultural factors.

Small nuances can drastically impact the utility of the technology and its long-term adoption. This may mean integrating translation capabilities to break down language barriers between staff members and patients or even building the EHR to accommodate diverse approaches for clinicians trained around the world.

Break Down Silos with Multidisciplinary Teams

Despite their best intentions, many hospitals focus on the wrong priorities as EHR implementations get underway. Clinical, pharmacy, integration, and administration teams plan in silos, solving problems for the squeakiest wheel. However, making decisions that benefit one team can harm processes for others.

Prioritize End Users

Rethink your approach by asking all end users what they truly need. Involving clinical stakeholders helps to take their temperature as you progress and informs changes throughout the project. Start by adding two crucial steps to streamline the process:

• Establish a multidisciplinary steering committee to prevent siloing project management teams
• Hold regular meetings to share decision logs, discuss dependencies, and align timelines to prevent bottlenecks across regulatory and building teams

Keep Communication Open After the Go-Live Date

The stakes are arguably higher after new technology debuts, becoming a pressure test for end users who finally get to use it and see its value. As a digital consumer, you’ve seen this between products that have flown or flopped, but as a clinical leader, the trajectory of an EHR implementation is in your hands. The best opportunity you have to ensure success is postlaunch follow-up.

Streamline the First Six Months

Between navigating the EHR platform and acclimating to workflow changes, recognize the learning curves and adjustments for your staff. Creating feedback loops with these users at specific benchmarks can help identify issues with the EHR and ensure smooth workflows.

• Months 1-3: Conduct post-go-live surveys and town halls to collect feedback and identify recurring problems, such as workflows requiring too many clicks or unnecessary features
• Months 1-6: Maintain the multidisciplinary steering committee and leverage user feedback to inform post-go-live optimization, manage changes, and address broken processes

A successful EHR implementation is defined by how your hospital’s culture adapts to the new reality. By making the build process inclusive and centering the solution on end users, you can mitigate staff frustration and realize your software’s full potential. Empower your staff to improve every facet of patient care.

About Donna Palmer

Donna Palmer is the Manager of Professional Services at Juno Health. A nurse by trade and former director of operations for Ambulatory Surgery Centers, Donna has seen the evolution of EHRs throughout her extensive experience in clinical settings, including spearheading EHR implementations for a small hospital network.

< + > This Week’s Health IT Jobs – April 1, 2026

It can be very overwhelming scrolling through job board after job board in search of a position that fits your wants and needs. Let us take that stress away by finding a mix of great health IT jobs for you! We hope you enjoy this look at some of the health IT jobs we saw healthcare organizations trying to fill this week.

Here’s a quick look at some of the health IT jobs we found:

• Clinical Content Specialist – Engagement – CHEO
• Healthcare Coordinator – PDS Health
• Director, AI Ethics and Governance – Centene Corporation
• CTO Community Health Advocate – MedStar Health
• Director Analytics & Informatics – The Doctors Company
• Data Intake Associate, Claims Services, Health and Risk Solutions – Sun Life
• Prior Authorization Coordinator – Agendia
• Quality Specialist – Medica
• Compliance Specialist Privacy – Ascension
• Director, IT SOX & Internal Controls – Guardant Health
• Patient Access Representative – Mercy
• Director IT – Governance, Risk & Compliance – Zentalis Pharmaceuticals
• Community Health Worker – Noble Community Clinics
• Patient Service Representative – Abrazo Health
• Health Data System Solutions Director – Booz Allen Hamilton
• Appeals Representative – TeamHealth
• Community Health Worker – Sentara Health
• Medical Records Specialist – HCA Healthcare
• Director Wellness and Prevention – Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC)
• Manager, IT Infrastructure Operations – August Bioservices, LLC

If none of these jobs fit your needs, be sure to check out our previous health IT job listings.

Do you have an open health IT position that you are looking to fill? Contact us here with a link to the open position and we’ll be happy to feature it in next week’s article at no charge!

*Note: These jobs are listed by Healthcare IT Today as a free service to the community. Healthcare IT Today does not endorse or vouch for the company or the job posting. We encourage anyone applying to these jobs to do their own due diligence.