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Troubleshoot your hospital's stent procedures

Health Care Auditing Strategies, April 1, 2005

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Make sure your facility is compliant with this OIG watch item

To keep up with one of the OIG's top priorities, verify that your hospital's cardiac stent procedures are compliant.

According to its annual Work Plan, the OIG will review at facilities whether stent procedures performed there were medically necessary and supported by adequate documentation.

The OIG's audit plans closely follow an investigation into complaints that Tenet Healthcare physicians performed more than 750 unnecessary cardiac procedures between 1999 and 2002. In December 2004, Tenet agreed to pay $395 million to settle the individual patient complaints.

Dara Corrigan, Esq., an attorney based in Washington, DC, with the firm Arnold & Porter, served as acting deputy inspector general during the Tenet case. Specialty hospitals run into trouble when doctors can profit from the number of surgeries they perform. "Problems occur when there is a high level of reimbursement and not enough oversight or peer review," Corrigan says.

Obtain help from a medical professional to review stent records, she adds.

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login.

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