ИСТИНА

Fraud and abuse represent a common problem and are increasing dramatically with the expansion of modern technology, especially in high-expenditure areas such as health care. The presence of fraud causes financial losses and reduces quality of health care and health statistics. The Russian network of Health Centers (HCs), which was established in late 2009 in view of the need to strengthen the fight against noncommunicable diseases, represents the only source of preventive screening data at the national level. In our previous work, the software program HCViewer was developed for analysis and processing of raw mass data from the HCs. A significant ever-growing proportion of frauds and technical errors in the HCs’ data, with a preliminary overall estimate from 11.2% in 2010 to 28.1% in 2014, was detected using a developed set of selection criteria. Here, we describe preliminary results on the applicability of empirical Benford’s law for monitoring quality of the HCs’ data. Taken together, our results suggest inefficiency of the Russian population preventive screening system management and emphasize the need for implementation of quality control automated system based on raw data process.