Modern Healthcare reports that Tuomey Healthcare System, in Sumter, S.C., seeks a partner to get through its financial woes, part of which stem from a i10-year legal battle over alleged illegal payments to physicians.
“Two years ago a federal judge ordered the not-for-profit provider to pay the government $237 million, a sum that exceeds its annual revenue,” the publication reported.
”A federal jury concluded in 2013 that the hospital violated the False Claims Act by submitting tens of thousands of illegal claims to Medicare. The jury found that Tuomey paid doctors in ways that rewarded them financially for referring patients to the hospital …causing the Medicare claims to be tainted.”
Federal investigators can’t keep up with the temptations to get Medicare money through dubious means.
