Florida's Fraud Factory

Florida has long been called America's Medicare fraud capital. Our data confirms it. The Sunshine State has 185 individual providers billing more than 400 services per working day — more than California (98) and Texas (91) combined. These 185 providers billed a combined $573.0M. The patterns span oncology, rheumatology, infectious disease, pathology, and internal medicine — and they cluster in surprising places.

The State Rankings

When we rank states by the number of individual providers billing at impossible volumes (400+ services per working day), Florida dominates:

Florida has nearly double the count of California, despite having a smaller population. The concentration is striking: 185 out of roughly 1,100 impossible-volume providers nationwide are in Florida — 17% of the national total from one state.

The Fort Walton Beach Connection

Fort Walton Beach is a small city of 22,000 people on Florida's panhandle. It has two providers on our impossible list: Jeffrey Lin, an infectious disease specialist billing 8.5K services per day, and Patrick Anastasio, an internal medicine doctor billing 4.7K services per day with 96% drug billing.

Lin's 8.5K services per day means one service every 3.4 seconds for 8 hours straight. Even if infectious disease involves multiple drug infusion codes per patient visit, this volume from a single doctor in a small panhandle city defies explanation.

Nearby Crestview (population 28,000) has Michael Vincent Tablang, another infectious disease specialist, billing 2.9K services per day. Two small neighboring cities, three impossible providers, over $14.5M in combined billing.

Florida's Top 20 Impossible Providers

The Specialty Breakdown

Florida's 185 impossible providers aren't concentrated in one specialty — they span the full spectrum of high-billing medicine:

The dominance of oncology and rheumatology — both drug-heavy specialties — mirrors the national pattern. But Florida's numbers are outsized relative to its population. The state has about 6.5% of the U.S. population but 17% of impossible-volume providers.

The Fort Myers Pathology Pair

Two pathologists in Fort Myers — Wilfredo Blasini ($16.9M,3.3K svc/day) and Ryan Olson ($12.8M,3.0K svc/day) — stand out for a different reason. Their drug billing is 0%. Pathology involves reading slides and specimens — high-volume work that can legitimately generate large service counts through automation and batch processing.

But combined they billed nearly $30.0M. For pathology. In Fort Myers. Whether this represents efficient high-throughput laboratory medicine or something else is worth investigating.

Why Florida?

Florida's status as Medicare's fraud capital has several structural explanations:

• Demographics: Florida has the second-highest share of residents 65+ in the nation, creating an enormous Medicare market
• Regulatory environment: Florida has historically had lighter healthcare regulation than states like New York or California
• Geographic dispersion: Providers aren't just in Miami — they're spread across small cities like Fort Walton Beach, Crestview, Spring Hill, and The Villages
• Established networks: DOJ investigations have repeatedly uncovered organized fraud rings operating in Florida, particularly in South Florida

The DOJ's 2024 National Health Care Fraud Enforcement Action — the largest ever at $14.6 billion — included multiple Florida defendants. Miami-Dade County alone has been the subject of more Medicare fraud prosecutions than most states.

Small Cities, Big Billing

Perhaps the most striking pattern is where these providers practice. Not Miami or Tampa or Orlando — but Naples, Port Charlotte, Spring Hill, The Villages, Palm Coast, Merritt Island. Small and mid-sized cities where a single high-billing provider can represent an outsized share of local Medicare spending.

The Villages — a massive retirement community — has Rakesh Rohatgi billing 1.6Kservices per day in hematology-oncology. Naples has three providers in the top 20: an internal medicine doctor, an oncologist, and a medical oncologist, collectively billing over $15.0M.

Florida's impossible-volume providers billed a combined $573.0M. Not all of this is fraud — drug-heavy specialties like oncology genuinely produce high service counts. But when one state consistently produces nearly double the impossible providers of any other, the pattern demands scrutiny.