For calendar years (CYs) 2010 and 2011, Medicare paid hospitals $711 million for claims that included a diagnosis code for Kwashiorkor, a form of severe protein malnutrition typically found in third-world countries that is extremely rare in the United States.Read More »
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recovered $5.69 billion in False Claims Act settlements in fiscal year (FY) 2014; $2.3 billion of which against federal healthcare programs,...Read More »
Every October, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) hands the public a cheat sheet of sorts—its annual Work Plan—releasing its list of audit targets for the coming calendar year. Sometimes its priorities echo those from previous years, other times they...Read More »
Inpatient admissions for patients undergoing cardiovascular procedures such as implants of stents and pacemakers and elective kyphoplasty procedures appears to be the culprit behind a $37 million dollar False Claims Act settlement between the government and Dignity Health,...Read More »
As the adage goes “a picture’s worth a thousand words” but for facilities wrangling with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) the adage might better be rephrased to “a sample’s worth a million dollars,” as the agency extrapolates payment errors to the sum of more than $400,000 related to...Read More »
In the first half of the 2014 fiscal year, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reported more than $3 billion in audit recoveries, nearly $3 billion recovered from investigations, and nearly a million in other non-Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) investigations due to efforts...Read More »