Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

This billing service overcharged Medicare by millions for physicians' charges. You've hired a billing service to handle your claims processing, and now you can let them worry about correct coding, right? Not so fast. Your billing service could be doing you more harm than good, and you won't know unless you check in with them from time to time. Last week, a California-based billing company agreed to pay the U.S. government $4.6 million to settle allegations that it submitted false claims to Medicare and Medicaid on behalf of physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare providers, a Dept. of Justice news release notes. Over a seven-year period, the billing company allegedly inflated claims, billing higher levels of E/M services than the physicians actually documented. In addition, the company added charges for minor services to the E/M claims, and failed to comply with Medicare's teaching physician rules. The takeaway: It's unclear from the [...]