Medicare Fraud Detection Using Graph Analysis: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning and Graph Neural Networks

Insurance companies have focused on medicare fraud detection to reduce financial losses and reputational harm because medicare fraud causes tens of billions of dollars in damage annually. This study demonstrates that medicare fraud detection can be significantly enhanced by introducing graph analysi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yeeun Yoo, Jinho Shin, Sunghyon Kyeong
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2023-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10223204/
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1850246243866902528
author Yeeun Yoo
Jinho Shin
Sunghyon Kyeong
author_facet Yeeun Yoo
Jinho Shin
Sunghyon Kyeong
author_sort Yeeun Yoo
collection DOAJ
description Insurance companies have focused on medicare fraud detection to reduce financial losses and reputational harm because medicare fraud causes tens of billions of dollars in damage annually. This study demonstrates that medicare fraud detection can be significantly enhanced by introducing graph analysis with considering the relationships among medical providers, beneficiaries, and physicians. We use open-source tabular datasets containing beneficiary information, inpatient claims, outpatient claims, and indications about potential fraudulent providers. We then aggregated them into a single dataset by converting them into a graph structure. Furthermore, we developed medicare fraud detection models using two approaches to reflect graph information, i.e., graph neural network (GNN) models and traditional machine learning models using graph centrality measures. Therefore, the machine learning model with graph centrality features showed improved precision of 4 percent point (%p), recall of 24 %p, and F1-score of 14 %p compared to the best GNN model. The improvement in recall to this extent could result in substantial cost savings of 3.1 billion euros and 5 billion dollars in the United States and Europe, respectively, benefiting governmental institutions and insurance companies involved in healthcare insurance operations. Furthermore, the required learning time of the best GNN model was approximately 250–300 times more than that of the best machine-learning model. This outcome suggests that successful and efficient detection of medicare fraud can be achieved if graph centrality measures are used to capture the relationships among medical providers, physicians, and beneficiaries.
format Article
id doaj-art-766ee7e53f804fa8b737ca36664ca239
institution OA Journals
issn 2169-3536
language English
publishDate 2023-01-01
publisher IEEE
record_format Article
series IEEE Access
spelling doaj-art-766ee7e53f804fa8b737ca36664ca2392025-08-20T01:59:14ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362023-01-0111882788829410.1109/ACCESS.2023.330596210223204Medicare Fraud Detection Using Graph Analysis: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning and Graph Neural NetworksYeeun Yoo0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7370-3178Jinho Shin1Sunghyon Kyeong2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9095-5219Division of Research and Development, KakaoBank, Seongnam-si, Republic of KoreaDivision of Research and Development, KakaoBank, Seongnam-si, Republic of KoreaDivision of Data Intelligence, KakaoBank, Seongnam-si, Republic of KoreaInsurance companies have focused on medicare fraud detection to reduce financial losses and reputational harm because medicare fraud causes tens of billions of dollars in damage annually. This study demonstrates that medicare fraud detection can be significantly enhanced by introducing graph analysis with considering the relationships among medical providers, beneficiaries, and physicians. We use open-source tabular datasets containing beneficiary information, inpatient claims, outpatient claims, and indications about potential fraudulent providers. We then aggregated them into a single dataset by converting them into a graph structure. Furthermore, we developed medicare fraud detection models using two approaches to reflect graph information, i.e., graph neural network (GNN) models and traditional machine learning models using graph centrality measures. Therefore, the machine learning model with graph centrality features showed improved precision of 4 percent point (%p), recall of 24 %p, and F1-score of 14 %p compared to the best GNN model. The improvement in recall to this extent could result in substantial cost savings of 3.1 billion euros and 5 billion dollars in the United States and Europe, respectively, benefiting governmental institutions and insurance companies involved in healthcare insurance operations. Furthermore, the required learning time of the best GNN model was approximately 250–300 times more than that of the best machine-learning model. This outcome suggests that successful and efficient detection of medicare fraud can be achieved if graph centrality measures are used to capture the relationships among medical providers, physicians, and beneficiaries.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10223204/Graph neural networkgraph centrality measuremachine learningmedicare fraud detection
spellingShingle Yeeun Yoo
Jinho Shin
Sunghyon Kyeong
Medicare Fraud Detection Using Graph Analysis: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning and Graph Neural Networks
IEEE Access
Graph neural network
graph centrality measure
machine learning
medicare fraud detection
title Medicare Fraud Detection Using Graph Analysis: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning and Graph Neural Networks
title_full Medicare Fraud Detection Using Graph Analysis: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning and Graph Neural Networks
title_fullStr Medicare Fraud Detection Using Graph Analysis: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning and Graph Neural Networks
title_full_unstemmed Medicare Fraud Detection Using Graph Analysis: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning and Graph Neural Networks
title_short Medicare Fraud Detection Using Graph Analysis: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning and Graph Neural Networks
title_sort medicare fraud detection using graph analysis a comparative study of machine learning and graph neural networks
topic Graph neural network
graph centrality measure
machine learning
medicare fraud detection
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10223204/
work_keys_str_mv AT yeeunyoo medicarefrauddetectionusinggraphanalysisacomparativestudyofmachinelearningandgraphneuralnetworks
AT jinhoshin medicarefrauddetectionusinggraphanalysisacomparativestudyofmachinelearningandgraphneuralnetworks
AT sunghyonkyeong medicarefrauddetectionusinggraphanalysisacomparativestudyofmachinelearningandgraphneuralnetworks