Part B Insider (Multispecialty) Coding Alert
Review Your Data Before Open Payments Go Live on May 15
Plus: Chiropractor charged with laundering health care payments.
As the 45-day window closes on May 15 to review and dispute so-called “sunshine payments,” CMS urges physicians and teaching hospitals to take a look before the information goes live to the public.
It’s always a good idea to review the payments that drug, device, and biologic manufacturers claim to have paid you because if it’s wrong you’ll want to dispute it and have the data amended before it is available to the public on June 30, 2016.
“The public has searched Open Payments data more than 6.3 million times,” CMS says in a blog post from April 14. That means that consumers are interested and likely applying the findings from the reports to their future searches for a reputable provider.
CMS will offer assistance via a live help desk this Saturday, May 14 and Sunday, May 15 from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. (ET).
Resource: For more information about the CMS Open Payments Open Payments Physician and Teaching Hospital Review and Dispute Period, visit www.cms.gov/openpayments/.
In other news…
An Illinois chiropractor faces up to 20 years in prison, $500,000 in fines, and three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to charges of health care fraud and money laundering, states a May 11 U.S. Department of Justice press release.
The Granite City doctor is said to have submitted false claims upwards of $500k to Medicare and a plethora of other agencies and carriers for services never rendered. The investigation managed by the Southern Illinois Health Care Fraud Task Force deduced that she was actually travelling abroad for the dates of service in question.
The chiropractor also admitted that she transferred $12,000 of the collected funds, resulting in a charge of money laundering.
Resource: For more information on this case filed by the Department of Justice,
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Illinois, visit www.justice.gov/usao-sdil/pr/granite-city-chiropractor-pleads-guilty-healthcare-fraud-and-money-laundering.
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Review Your Data Before Open Payments Go Live on May 15
Plus: Chiropractor charged with laundering health care payments. As the 45-day window closes on May [...]
