By Adam Turteltaub

Healthcare is often rife with fraud, and organizations struggle to prevent it. To gain a different perspective on how to prevent wrongdoing, we spoke with Alec Burlakoff, a convicted fraudster from Insys Pharmaceuticals who now leads Limitless! Consulting.

To prevent fraud, he recommends seriously looking at the incentives program in your organization, especially if there are individuals whose commissions may make up  more than half of their compensation. Such high rates of reward, he warns, provide serious temptation to skirt, or outright disregard, the rules.

Look also at the messages that lucrative incentive programs send to others in the organization. Individuals who are inclined to do the right thing may find themselves envying those they see breaking the rules and getting rewarded. It can cause them to emulate the bad behavior that they see.

Better, he advises, is to seek ways to reward people who do things the right way and build sales for the long term.

When it comes to discipline, he takes a very hard line. Many companies, he finds, have zero tolerance policies, but they may not apply them. That, he believes, has to stop. The only way to get the attention of the workforce is to swiftly punish, including terminating, employees who break the rules.

Finally, he advises compliance teams to understand the thinking of businesspeople. Know what motivates them, understand their thinking, and get inside their heads. Only then will you be able to effectively reach them.

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