Look behind you

The UK National Health Service, as the world’s third largest employer (after the Chinese Army and Indian Railways), presents a clear target for financial criminals. The organisation’s Counter Fraud Service believes strongly that ‘prevention is better than cure’ and background checks of those who would work for or with the NHS are a fundamental part of the treatment as Kieron Cotter explains.

Kieron Cotter is the manager of the NHS Counter Fraud Service’s Central Intelligence Unit. The NHS Counter Fraud Service may be contacted on tel: +44 (0) 20 7895 4500; website www.cfsms.nhs.uk/commercial/index.html

The NHS Counter Fraud Service (NHS CFS) is committed to reducing fraud against the health service to an absolute minimum – and that means stopping as much as possible before it starts. Background checking is a powerful weapon in this fight. It might be a case of identifying someone who has committed fraud previously and is trying to obtain a job to do the same again; it might be discovering identity theft by would-be staff or contractors; it could mean picking up faked or inflated qualifications.