Posts Tagged: medicare fraud

What’s wrong with Medicare? Here’s another Prime example

Remember the kwashiorkor plague striking Northern California — where the African childhood disease was spreading like wildfire, but only amongst seniors with Medicare getting treatment at hospitals affiliated with Prime Healthcare?

Well, according to Christina Jewett and Stephen K. Doig of California Watch, in a story published in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, in addition to a chronic case of upcoding, Prime Healthcare is also apparently hospitalizing patients who should be discharged, in an effort to maximize bills to Medicare and various H.M.O.’s. (more…)

Bill Out Your Dead

Taxpayers spent $273,457 treating 35 dead California patients in 2007 and 2008, according to an audit by the Department of Health and Human Services’ office of inspector general, writes Christina Jewett of the Center for Investigative Reporting’s CaliforniaWatch.   But rather than unsuccessful research by secret government death panels, the expenses have a more prosaic explanation: Medicare fraud. (more…)