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Regulators target quality-of-care violations to find false claims

Health Care Auditing Strategies, October 1, 2005

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A Pennsylvania hospital has agreed to pay $200,000 to settle charges that employees used improper restraints to subdue patients.

The settlement, which was reached in July, is one more indication that government regulators are taking a serious look at quality-of-care noncompliance in hospitals and that hospital auditors will do well to evaluate quality of care in their own facilities.

"This is a sentinel case in that it signals the interest of the OIG in pursuing cases of this nature," says Todd Sagin, MD, JD, medical director for The Greeley Company in Marblehead, MA, a division of HCPro, Inc.

Central Montgomery Medical Center in Lansdale, PA, was charged with violating the False Claims Act for submitting claims "in connection with" the improper care, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer . The lawsuit came after a patient in a retraining vest died in 2002. According to the Inquirer , the lawsuit also outlined several other complaints, including patients restrained for more days than doctors ordered.

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