by Ben Vernia | August 12th, 2014
On August 5, the Office of Inspector General of HHS announced that a Florida laboratory company had paid over $197,000 to resolve Civil Monetary Penalty allegations of false billing to Medicare. According to the OIG’s press release:
Florida Family Laboratories, LLC (FFL), a Florida urine drug testing company, agreed to enter into a $197,400.09 settlement agreement with the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services effective August 5, 2014. The settlement resolves allegations FFL submitted false or fraudulent claims to Medicare. Specifically, OIG contends FFL submitted claims to Medicare for high complexity urine drug tests exceeding the number of units allowed by Medicare by using an inappropriate code to bypass computer programming that would have otherwise rejected such claims. OIG’s Office of Audit Services and Office of Counsel to the Inspector General, represented by Senior Counsels Andrea Treese Berlin and Geoff Hymans, collaborated to achieve this settlement.
