Baltimore, Maryland – Melvin Gonzaga, M.D., his son Rommel Gonzaga, and their practice group Gonzaga Interventional Pain Management (“GIPM”) have agreed to pay the United States $980,000 to resolve allegations that they violated the federal False Claims Act by submitting false claims to the United States for urine drug tests (“UDT”) that were medically unnecessary.
North Country Neurology, P.C., a physician-owned medical practice located in Watertown, New York, has agreed to pay $850,000 for what it admitted was “improper” and “reckless” billing to the federal government for medical services, announced United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman.
Hundreds — if not thousands — of caregivers at Providence hospitals throughout Northern California say they have not received adequate pay for the last month due to a widespread error in the hospital’s new payroll system.
The AHA has long believed that tackling health disparities and promoting diversity within health care leadership are critical to ensuring high-quality care for all people.
This is a confusing time in the public health emergency. Americans are thinking less about COVID-19 on a daily basis and many are eager to move on. But COVID-19 hasn’t gone away, as evidenced by quick spread of the new variant, and it will continue to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future.
We are pleased that CMS will provide hospitals and health systems with increased inpatient payments next year, rather than a cut as proposed, allowing them to better provide care for their patients and communities. As we urged, CMS will use more recent data to calculate the market basket and disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments, which yields far more accurate figures that better reflect the historic inflation and tremendous labor and supply cost pressures hospitals and health systems face.
