DATE: Tuesday, November 18, 1997            TAG: 9711180269

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE                   LENGTH:   41 lines

U.VA. HOSPITAL SETTLES PAST MEDICARE OVERBILLING

Physicians at the University of Virginia hospital have paid the federal government $8.6 million for overbilling Medicare.

The U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria began an investigation last fall after a voluntary internal audit by the U.Va. Health Services Foundation revealed errors in billing for the health care insurance program from 1991 to 1996.

The foundation, the private billing arm for the university's 450 faculty physicians, admitted no liability as part of the settlement.

The foundation found that it billed Medicare twice by asking Medicare to pay teaching doctors for services that residents and interns actually provided.

U.Va.'s teaching doctors now are required to more stringently document the level of their involvement in patient care before billing Medicare, the foundation said.

``The documentation of services rendered was not up to standard,'' said William E. Carter Jr., the foundation's executive director.

He said there is no indication that the billing errors occurred knowingly or deliberately. No doctors or staff members of the foundation will be penalized. ``There's no fraud in this,'' he said.

Carter said the audit revealed that billing errors occurred throughout the institution and were not confined to a group of doctors or a department. Individual medical departments will pay a prorated share of the settlement, he said.

The $8.6 million settlement is the equivalent of about 3 percent of U.Va. doctors' total Medicare billings during the five-year period, Carter said.

Other teaching hospitals that have reached similar settlements with the government have paid penalties on top of reimbursements. The U.S. attorney's office commended U.Va. for voluntarily coming forward with the findings of its audit. KEYWORDS: MEDICARE FRAUD

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