ATLANTA – CRH Healthcare, LLC and Peachtree Immediate Care FP, LLC agreed to pay $1,600,000 to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act (FCA) by submitting improperly upcoded Evaluation and Management claims to Medicare for the testing and treatment of patients with suspected exposure to COVID-19 during the Coronavirus pandemic.
“Health care professionals provided an invaluable service to the public during the Coronavirus pandemic. But medical practices that seek to misrepresent the services they provide to patients, and to improperly profit from such practices, must be held accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. “The Department of Justice will work diligently to protect taxpayer dollars by ensuring that medical providers fairly and accurately bill federal health care programs.”
“When providers submit improper claims to Medicare, they waste valuable taxpayer dollars,” said Tamala E. Miles, Special Agent in Charge with the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG). “Health care providers played a critical role in keeping our nation safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, and HHS-OIG is committed to protecting federal health care programs from fraud, waste, and abuse to ensure they can be used for their intended purposes.”
“The FBI is thankful for the honesty of the whistleblowers who stepped forward to identify this alleged fraud,” said Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta. “The FBI and our law enforcement partners will continue to pursue reports of medical facilities filing false or misleading claims, choices that ultimately rob our citizens.”
The FCA is a federal law that imposes civil liability on any persons or entities who submit, or cause to be submitted, false claims for payment to the federal government or its contractors. It imposes treble damages (that is, three times the loss caused by the false claims) and a civil penalty between $13,508 to $27,018 per…
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