South Carolina Hospital Blocked from Collecting Medicare Pay

The US Health and Human Services Department properly denied a South Carolina health-care facility’s Medicare reimbursement for 1997 because the facility didn’t provide HHS with information supporting the payment request.

Lancaster Hospital Corp., which previously operated as Springs Memorial Hospital in Lancaster, S.C., failed to give an HHS contractor financial and statistical data that was capable of being audited to verify that the facility’s payment request reflected costs it actually incurred in treating Medicare patients, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said Wednesday.

The court rejected Lancaster’s argument that the regulations and governing statute allow the agency ...