Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, Mass., will have to repay $840,067 in Medicare funds to the federal government after an audit from the HHS Office of Inspector General found billing errors.
Most of the billing errors came on the inpatient side. The 245-bed Good Samaritan, which is part of Boston-based Steward Health Care System, had several claims billed for Medicare Part A when they should have been billed for Part B. In addition, the OIG found billing errors related to incorrect separate inpatient stays, incorrect discharge statuses and wrong source-of-admission codes, among other errors.
Hospital officials agreed with most of the OIG's findings, although they said they planned to appeal 11 claims for wrongful billing of inpatient status. The OIG stood by its findings.
Good Samaritan is the third Steward hospital in the past three months to undergo an OIG audit. In December, the OIG said St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton, Mass., had to refund more than $1.2 million in Medicare payments. In January, the OIG said billing errors at Morton Hospital in Taunton, Mass., resulted in $548,451 in incorrect Medicare reimbursements.
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