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As per the official reports, Dignity Health, a San Francisco based hospital chain has agreed to pay back $37 million in order to resolve the over-billing claims. The Northern Californian hospital was charged of over-billing the Federal Insurance program.
12 hospitals, including Mercy General, Mercy San Juan and many others that fall under the San Francisco-based health system were accused. It has been observed that some of these hospitals were litigated for overcharging for simply persistent spinal cord compression operations.
An ex-employee of the Dignity Health, Kathleen Hawkins charged the hospital, declaring that the hospital generated a false statement and exaggerated the Medicare from 2006 to 2010. Hawkins will get $6.25 million from the total settlement payment.
Health care systems that admit patients just to increase the revenue of the hospital should be answerable for every single deed, Ivan Negroni, Health and Human Services researcher said. The hospitals should treat patients on the basis of what is beneficial for them instead of what is good for the system, he added.
In contrast, the Dignity Health officials stated, “The billing clashes are due to a prevailing confusion emerging from the vague federal standards on approving patient admissions’ coverage.”
A spokesman from the Dignity health hospital informed that the organization resolved this issue so that it could get rid of the court cases. Dignity Health is considered as one of the five biggest hospital systems of the country.
Additionally, it has been reported that Dignity Health has decided to hire an auditor specially to re-examine all the Medicare claims.
Any person knowing the fraudulent activity has the right to inform government officials. The person can litigate the corrupt organization on behalf of the federal government under the Federal False Claims Act.
More than $23 billion has been recovered by the Justice Department through False Claims Act cases, since January 2009.
