MORE ON: medicare

After billing Medicare for treating more than 1,100 cases of a rare affliction, a Prime Healthcare Services hospital in Redding abruptly stopped last year, state health records show. The change occurred soon after California Watch published a story about aggressive billing practices at the hospital... + read more

California hospitals got paid twice, to the tune of $67.5 million in 2010, for spinal surgeries performed on workers’ compensation patients. That's according to a new study from the California Workers' Compensation Institute. These unusual duplicate payments –... + read more

Loretta Jackson spent five days in a Santa Rosa hospital in April 2009 for severe back and leg pain, and as a Medicare beneficiary, she expected the federal program for the elderly would cover her medical treatment. At the hospital, she was given an MRI, intravenous narcotics and... + read more

A national for-profit hospice care company partially owned by a San Francisco private equity firm has been accused of bilking Medicare of millions of dollars, according to a legal complaint filed this week by the U.S. Department of Justice. In court documents, the government contends that... + read more

Stephen K. Doig’s specialty is the analysis of large government datasets, a technique called precision journalism, which uses software to reveal patterns. + read more

Darlene Courtois had never heard of kwashiorkor, a dangerous form of malnutrition, but records show her hospital billed Medicare for treating the condition anyway. + read more