According to a report just released by Health and Human services, nursing homes overcharged Medicare $1.5 million a year and that a majority of the overcharges involved claims from facilities that provide specialized care for more intensive services that were provided. The report cited documents showing Medicare was billed for work such as speech therapy and occupational therapy for patients who couldn’t benefit from it. The HHS inspector general has been studying Medicare billings for several years and said the government paid $32.2 billion to 15,000 skilled nursing facilities during the 2012 fiscal year. The report focused on randomly selected samples of 499 claims submitted by 245 nursing homes around the US. Depending on the type of service, Medicare paid between $214 and $623 per patient per day in 2009. Investigators found that nursing homes provided more therapy during the period on which bills were based than other times of treatment.
Jeffrey Newman represents whistleblowers.
