WASHINGTON – Empower Oversight has filed a public records request with New York’s Center for Hospice and Palliative Care, the state agency responsible for regulating the hospice industry, as part of its broader investigation into fraud involving federal taxpayer funds.
The request seeks documents that shed light on potential systemic failures in hospice oversight, and on how the agency has identified, responded to, or declined to act on known fraud indicators.
Hospice fraud has been extensively documented both in New York and nationwide. The Vice President’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud has charged eight individuals with defrauding the health care system of more than $50 million, and the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has launched an investigation into what it describes as “rampant hospice fraud.”
“Because hospice care does not provide curative treatment, the hospice benefit is uniquely vulnerable to exploitation by bad actors seeking to profit from the system,” said Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt.
The records request targets four key areas: complaints, investigations, and enforcement actions against hospice providers, including fraud schemes involving ghost patients and improper billing; licensing controls and internal policies governing hospice certification and fraud detection; inter-agency communications with the governor’s office and federal bodies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, and the Department of Justice; and billing audits, program integrity reports, and data analyses flagging abnormal patterns or overpayments.
This filing is the latest in Empower Oversight’s ongoing, multi-state investigation into the misuse of federal funds. The organization has already filed similar requests:
- Empower Oversight pressed the California Department of Public Health for comprehensive records related to hospice fraud and oversight failures, focusing on how the agency responded, or failed to respond, to known fraud indicators, including suspicious clustering of hospice providers at single addresses, abnormal billing patterns, and unusually high reimbursement rates.
- In January 2026, Empower Oversight filed a records request with the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families targeting that state’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), which receives approximately $185 million in federal funds annually. Minnesota was among five states subject to a federal funding freeze and has faced sustained scrutiny over empty childcare facilities and improper payments identified by federal inspectors.
- Empower Oversight filed a Freedom of Information Law request with the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, seeking records related to the oversight and integrity of New York’s own CCAP, a program that distributed more than $1.1 billion in federal funds in fiscal year 2025.
For a copy of the letter click here.
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