The University of Louisville (Ky.) Hospital has agreed to pay the federal government roughly $2.83 million to resolve allegations of false billing to Medicare, according to a Courier-Journal report.
From 2006 through 2010, the university's FirstCare program, which provides nonurgent care in the emergency room, employed nurse practitioners and physician assistants whose salaries and benefits were paid by Medicare.
In that timeframe, emergency room physicians treated those professionals as their own employees and allegedly collected Medicare for the nurse practitioners' and physician assistants' services.
Hospital attorneys disclosed to the U.S. Attorney's Office in April 2011 that it may have violated federal law concerning the relationships it had with certain healthcare providers, according to the report.
Due to the hospital's cooperation with the Office of Inspector General's investigation, it avoided a corporate integrity agreement.
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