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Investigators and prosecutors continue to use their coding knowledge to wring big settlements from practices. These tactics have left four physician practices poorer by an average of $218,465, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Maryland announced on March 16.

It's a familiar scenario: A provider is accused of letting unqualified, improperly supervised employees perform services and billing for their work. It is a scenario we associate with small practices, not a large health system with multiple locations and — one assumes — a robust compliance policy.
Don't believe the myth that enforcers only keep the big fish in health care fraud schemes — hospitals, diagnostic providers, pharmaceutical companies and so on — and let the small fry such as doctors and medical practices go.

On the heels of two similar settlements, a Baltimore health system has settled a case for $122,928 in which it was accused of getting the doctors whose practice it had acquired to bill established patients as if they were new, inflating their charges.

The HHS Office of Inspector General's (OIG's) latest update to the 2017 Work Plan includes a review of psychotherapy services billed to Medicare Part B.

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