An Indianapolis-based health network has agreed to pay the government $345 million to resolve charges it defrauded Medicare by overpaying doctors who referred patients to its facilities, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The agreement settles allegations that senior management at Community Health Network recruited hundreds of doctors beginning in 2008 and paid them salaries that were significantly higher than what they received in their own private practices, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Community Health submitted an unspecified number of claims to Medicare for services that resulted from the unlawful referrals, the department said. That violated a federal statute known as the Stark Law, which prohibits hospitals from billing for certain services referred by physicians with whom the hospital has a financial relationship unless the doctors’ compensation is consistent with fair market value and not based on the value or volume of their referrals to the hospital.
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