MORE ON: medicare

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

Hospitals have a lot of discretion when deciding what to include in their bills to Medicare, which in 2010 paid out more than $500 billion to health providers. + read more

A detailed look at the case of a single patient at Chino Valley Medical Center shows just how much money a hospital can make when listing acute heart failure as a secondary diagnosis on a Medicare bill. + read more

California Watch examined three years’ worth of state Medicare billing data showing that Chino Valley Medical Center, owned by Prime Healthcare Services, had the highest rate in the state of acute heart failure cases. + read more

Former medical coding staff from Prime Healthcare hospitals have raised concerns about diagnoses that may misconstrue what’s going on with the patient. However, it is not always easy for patients to know what diagnoses were used as a basis for a hospital bill to Medicare. Find answers to questions... + read more