Home Health & Hospice Week
OIG Throws Spotlight On Chain's Fraud Settlement
Amedisys records loss for recent quarter.
National chain Amedisys Inc. has recorded a loss for the most recent quarter, and it’s bigger than the one it reported a year ago.
For the quarter ended March 31, Amedisys records a net loss of $34.8 million on revenues of $301.6 million, according to a release. That compares to a $12.5 million loss on $298.7 million in revenues in the year-ago quarter.
However, Amedisys did beat analyst expectations by reporting net income from continuing operations attributable to Amedisys per diluted share of $0.30, compared to net loss from continuing operations of $0.07 per diluted share in 2014. Analysts were predicting $0.10.
Amedisys takes a drubbing in the HHS Office of Inspector General’s Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program report. The OIG touts the $150 million settlement Amedisys agreed to settle a myriad of charges. The settlement “resolves allegations that, between 2008 and 2010, certain Amedisys offices improperly billed Medicare for ineligible patients and services,” the DOJ said in an April 2014 release. “Amedisys allegedly billed Medicare for nursing and therapy services that were medically unnecessary or provided to patients who were not homebound, and otherwise misrepresented patients’ conditions to increase its Medicare payments,” it continued.
“These billing violations were the alleged result of management pressure on nurses and therapists to provide care based on the financial benefits to Amedisys, rather than the needs of patients,” the DOJ said at the time.
The HCFAC report goes into more detail about the case. “The settlement resolved certain allegations that Amedisys’ financial relationship with a private oncology practice — whereby Amedisys employees provided patient care coordination services to the oncology practice at below-market prices — violated the Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark Law,” the OIG notes in the report at http://oig.hhs.gov/publications/docs/hcfac/FY2014-hcfac.pdf. The OIG also points out that Amedisys entered into a five-year Corporate Integrity Agree-ment with the agency.
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