Hey Y'all! It's time for #FridayFraudsters!!
An eye practice and its physician owner have agreed to pay over $460,000 to resolve allegations of submitting false claims to Medicare and Medicaid. The DOJ's investigation revealed that the practice allegedly billed for services not provided and for tests that were either medically unnecessary or performed at a frequency far exceeding the standard of care.
Allegedly the practice contracted with a medical diagnostics company to perform transcranial doppler (TCD) tests on its patients. The diagnostics company staffed the practice with a tech that reviewed patient files and filled out forms to order TCD tests from the company, which the physicians at the practice signed. Some of the forms included diagnoses that the patients did not have but would support the tests. In addition, the practice allegedly paid either $30 to the diagnostics company or a radiology company associated with it to interpret the TCD test, but the practice billed Medicare for the interpretations of the tests.
The United States contends that the claims for TCD tests that BCEP and Dr. Scimeca submitted, or caused the submission of, were false because: (1) the TCD tests were medically unnecessary because the patients did not have symptoms justifying the need for the tests, or the tests were not necessary for the patients’ treatment; (2) BCEP and Dr. Scimeca billed for professional services that they did not perform; and (3) the arrangement between BCEP and the TCD company violated the AKS because BCEP and Dr. Scimeca accepted remuneration from the Company by billing for and retaining payments from Medicare and the FEHB Program for services that the Company provided.
The company paid almost $470,000 to settle the allegations. This was brought stemmed from a whistleblower, or qui tam, suit.
I wonder if the physicians were not trying to commit fraud but were just negligent about what they were doing (did they review the orders that the outside tech filled out before signing them, etc.). But it was their tax id on those claims, so they were responsible. This is a reminder for health care practices to regularly audit their billing practices to avoid costly legal repercussions and these types of costly issues.
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#HealthcareCompliance #Medicare #Medicaid #FalseClaimsAct #DOJ #EthicalHealthcare #BillingIntegrity #CHCS
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Dental Health Care Professional
2moIt's quite obvious that Dentistry has changed over the years and especially if you're dealing with government payments you need to be so careful about what you do how you do it and how you document it everything is based on documentation and you must do something to be successful otherwise you can get zapped the way this poor group of doctors did.