UCHealth Resolves Claims of Fraudulent Billing for $23 Million

University of Colorado Health agreed to pay $23 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act in seeking and receiving payment from federal health-care programs for visits to its emergency departments and by falsely coding certain claims submitted to the Medicare and TRICARE programs, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

According to the DOJ, UCHealth hospitals automatically coded certain claims for emergency room visits using CPT 99285, which represents the highest possible use of hospital resources. The system used this code whenever its health-care providers checked a patient’s set of vital signs more than once an hour, ...