Closing the book on a massive make-good process that began in 2014, the Obama administration released an itemized list of the hospitals that received funds as part of a settlement over Medicare billing disputes. Among other revelations, four of the five hospitals receiving the heftiest payouts are located in New York state, led by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, which collected just short of $16 million.
At the time the broad-based settlement was announced, in late August of 2014, healthcare facilities were mired in thousands of extended disputes with the government over unpaid bills. The backlog was said be so significant that it took a minimum of a year-and-a-half to bring a case to resolution.
When the settlement was first presented, it was termed an opportunity ““to alleviate the administrative burden of current appeals on both the hospital and Medicare system.”
(Image credit: Alex Brandon, AP)
According to a Kaiser Health News analysis of the government’s release, 35 hospitals claimed at least $5 million in the settlement. Kaiser Health News further reports the median payout was $307,642.
Besides NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the other New York facilities among the top five beneficiaries are: North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset ($14.5 million), Long Island Jewish Medical Center ($10.8 million), and NYU Langone Medical Center ($10.5 million).
CHI Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee was another facility collecting at this elevated level, pulling in $10.9 million in the settlement. The Tennessee hospital’s settlement entailed the most individual billings, by a sizable margin. Their total claim count was 2935, over 900 more than the next closest facility, North Shore University Hospital, which registered 2029 claims.
Though the detailed listing of specific dollar amounts was released this week, the actual settlements were paid in 2015. In total, the government paid nearly $1.5 billion to settle approximately 346,000 claims made by over 2,000 hospitals.
