Vanderbilt Medical Center has settled a lawsuit claiming it overbilled Medicare and Medicaid. The hospital will pay $6.5 million and fund an outside audit of its billing practices.
This was a whistleblower lawsuit,
filed by a firm in New Jersey. Former physicians claimed that Vanderbilt submitted fraudulent claims, charging the higher rate for an attending physician when a medical resident performed the service. The hospital is also accused of billing for unnecessary anesthesia and charging for the same surgeon performing multiple operations at the same time.
Vanderbilt’s attorney says the hospital continues to strongly dispute the allegations, adding that after six years in court, the settlement was purely to avoid the cost and distraction of litigation.
“All parties agree that the allegations in the lawsuit have neither been proven nor disproven,” VUMC general counsel Michael Regier says in a statement. “While the plaintiffs and federal government found no evidence of wrongdoing, litigating these types of cases is very expensive and time consuming.”
The $6.5 million is paid to the government, though the whistleblowers are also entitled to as much as 30 percent of the money.
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