And evidence of fraud throughout the program has soared, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation has found.
Created to combat Wisconsin’s dire problem of babies dying before their first birthday, a growing group of for-profit and nonprofit companies collected more than $22 million last year alone.
Yet Wisconsin continues to have one of the nation’s worst records for Black infant mortality, a troubling rate that has shown little improvement over the years despite the rapid growth of the prenatal care industry.
A review of thousands of pages of documents and interviews with dozens of people, including regulators, clients, social services experts and those who own or work for prenatal care coordination companies, uncovered financial mismanagement and revealed an industry raking in millions with little government oversight. Indications of fraud included fictitious billings, forgeries and coordinators claiming to be in two places at once, the Journal Sentinel investigation found.
Among the newspaper’s findings: