These point-of-care cups cost more than $40,000

by: Julia Kyles, CPC May 23, 2018

An Opp, Ala.-based medical practice will pay a hefty sum to settle allegations that the practice violated the anti-kickback statute and the Stark physician self-referral rule.

The HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) alleged that the Affordable Medical Care practice received improper remuneration from Millennium Health, LLC, in the form of point-of-care test cups, which resulted in prohibited referrals.

The agency further alleged that "the referrals were prohibited because the remuneration created a financial relationship and that AMC caused Millennium to present claims for designated health services that resulted from the prohibited referrals," the OIG announced in a press release about the settlement.

It is not known whether these charges stem from a settlement of $256 million that Millennium paid in 2015 to get out from under Justice Department allegations that they'd "systematically billed federal health care programs for excessive and unnecessary urine drug testing" and that "Millennium’s provision of free point of care urine drug test cups to physicians—expressly conditioned on the physicians’ agreement to return the urine specimens to Millennium for hundreds of dollars’ worth of additional testing—violated the Stark Law and the Anti-Kickback Statute.

The practice and the practice's owner will pay $40,500.50 to resolve the matter.

Blog Tags: anti-fraud, compliance, OIG

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