Federal Investigators Continue Probe in Alleged Fraudulent Billing Charges at UT Southwestern Hospitals

Federal investigators are looking into billing practices at Dallas' University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Parkland Memorial Hospital, after previous investigations discovered the hospitals had billed the government for services provided by faculty physicians when they were performed by unsupervised residents, according to a report in The Dallas Morning News.

Residents at Parkland, the main teaching hospital at UT Southwestern, are often granted a large amount of autonomy, which the hospital and the medical school say is within national regulations, according to the report. To meet Medicare requirements, faculty physicians must supervise residents or provide the service themselves. Medicaid's requirements are less strict, but complex procedures must be supervised or provided by faculty physicians.

Internal audits have identified failure by the UT Southwestern to prevent fraud and to comply with billing laws, in spite of a decades-long investigation and several internal memos encouraging faculty physicians to ensure residents were not fraudulent in their billing practices, according to the report.

Failure to fix billing issues could result in sanctions and civil penalties for UT Southwestern.

Read the News's report about UT Southwestern's billing issues.