For more than eight years, a large number of hospitals across the country apparently found that performing a certain procedure to treat spinal cord injuries was inordinately lucrative.
Especially when they overbilled Medicare and the American taxpayers for the treatment.
They're now paying back, with U.S. Justice Department spokespersons saying that more than $12 million will be recouped from false billings for kyphoplasty procedures. Kyphoplasty treats spinal fractures resulting from osteoporosis.
"This settlement will help support the vital public health care programs we depend on," a government attorney said in announcing the hospitals involved and the payment figures.
The largest outlay -- $3.9 million -- will be paid back by a number of Florida hospitals associated with Adventist Health Systems/Sunbelt Inc. The largest payment from a single facility will come from Plainview Hospital, a New York provider. Plainview is tasked with paying back $2.3 million.
Government investigators began focusing on the significant money figures attached to kyphoplasty procedures around 2000. The settlement just reached involves 14 hospitals in a number of states, with Justice Department officials saying that dozens of other hospitals also systematically overbilled Medicare over a multi-year period by submitting false invoices. Altogether, more than 40 hospitals have been implicated, and about $39 million is being reclaimed.
The settlements follow in the wake of a whistleblower lawsuit brought in 2008 against Kyphon Inc., a manufacturer of surgical equipment. That company's successor, Medtronic Spine LLC, was forced to pay the government $78 million that same year for Medicare fraud.
Source: Bloomberg, "Fourteen hospitals reach $12 million false claims accord," Laurence Viele Davidson, Feb. 9, 2012
