A Florida hospital system has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle allegations involving discounts offered to certain Medicare beneficiaries.
Baptist Health System reached the settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, according to a Justice Department news release Monday.
The news release said Baptist was accused of violating a federal law known as the False Claims Act by “knowingly causing its subsidiaries to offer discounts to patients to induce them” to purchase services from subsidiaries or for referral of services. The discounts were on patient cost-sharing requirements.
The Justice Department said Baptist reported potential violations in 2022 to the federal government and stopped the discount policies.
The settlement said it is not an “admission of liability” by the hospital system.
“The department will continue to rely on the False Claims Act to address the use of prohibited remuneration to induce federal health care business,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a prepared statement Monday. “We encourage providers to mitigate the consequences of prior improper conduct by making timely self-disclosures, cooperating with our investigations and adopting enhanced compliance procedures.”
