Oklahoma is a state with many trusted medical facilities. With that in mind, one situation that can detail your health care practice is being found guilty of fraud. Fortunately, you can help ensure that your company remains safe by avoiding these common types of health care fraud.
Upcoding
Medical professionals can offer a wide range of services for their patients. Considering that, it’s sometimes easy for staff members to get one service confused with another one. This confusion can result in upcoding, a term for someone getting billed for more expensive services than they received. Understandably, this situation can make your patients quite angry.
Unbundling
Your practice might also unknowingly commit health care fraud by sending out multiple bills for a single patient visit. To avoid this problematic situation, have your staff double-check to ensure that a patient’s bill wasn’t already sent out.
Phantom billing
Another common white-collar crime in the health care industry is phantom billing. Phantom billing happens when someone receives a bill for products they didn’t receive or services that weren’t performed.
For example, you might see a patient that only needs a check-up. However, after their visit, they receive a bill for extensive testing that wasn’t performed on them. This mix-up would result in a patient receiving a phantom bill.
As you can see, there are several ways that a medical facility can knowingly or unknowingly engage in health care fraud. Getting found guilty of health care fraud can mean paying fines, facing jail time and closing the doors on your practice. Avoid engaging in the previously mentioned behaviors to protect the future of your medical business.
