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Monday, November 17, 2008
McCready Hospital Under Investigation For Medicare Fraud
McCready Hospital in Crisfield is under investigation for Medicare fraud. They have been accused of billing Medicare for Non-invasive vascular studies illegally for years. It is required that the hospital have a registered vascular technologist, or an accredited lab by JCAHO standards. They have NEVER had either one, and have continued to bill for these services. What a great disservice they are providing for their patients---huh? The ironic thing of it all-----the person in charge of the vascular dept has allegedly known and continued to do nothing about it.
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16 comments:
OMG!They ARE trying to raise money for a multi-million dollar nursing home to replace the old one but I never imagined they were capable of fraud!How did this come to light?Did they have a whistleblower?????
Joe, how can this possibly be? It was just on Nov. 5, 2008, that The Delmarva Foundation for Medical Care, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Maryland, awarded the 2008 Delmarva Foundation Excellence Award for Quality Improvement to McCready Hospital for treating heart attacks, congestive heart failure, and pneumonia patients. Obviously, central to treating heart attacks and congestive heart failure are fundamental and initial tests performed by a registered vascular technologist or a lab accredited by JCAHO standards. So, Joe, McCready had no staff or outside qualified source to perform these critical tests on patients with life threatening illnesses, and they fraudulently billed the US Government and taxpayers for the work? It sounds like a formal review of all McCready patients’ cases is in order to determine what, if any, negative patient ramifications resulted from this unprofessional and illegal conduct by McCready. This type behavior by our supposed, life saving medical institution is unforgivable, unethical and necessitates that an immediate bottoms up/top down outside management audit of the Hospital be conducted to determine what other required certifications and standards are not being met by McCready. Sounds like the McCready CEO doesn’t have his finger on the pulse of the organization, and it also is blatantly obvious that the Delmarva Foundation for Medical Care did not perform the necessary investigative due diligence preparatory to their awarding McCready this recent Quality Improvement award.
It's a shame that because someone in that department got terminated (because she wasn't doing her job appropriately) that she is so disgruntled and vindictive she felt the need to spread trash and attempt to ruin McCready's reputation. Shame on you! People need to know the whole truth and consider the source.
Joe.....I'm a regular commenter on this board with a blogger id, but to protect my own arse, I'll post this one anonymously.....I worked for about a year at McCready in their accounting department, (about 10 years ago) and can only say that Crisfield is a strangely peculiar place. I expected to see something that I really shouldn't have, like opening the wrong door, and see that the town is really run by horror movies type mobsters. It's a crooked town with old crooked money. They have their own set of rules, and they are all above the law in their own eyes.
To Anon 4:36pm
It's great to see that PRMC administration has the time to post on Salisbury News. A little pissed McCready got the Delmarva Foundation reward? Peggy!
I work there and there is dirty stuff going on. People cover there buts to make themselfs look good.
Instead of slandering, why don't you get the facts instead of publishing lies from disgruntled employees?
I just hope they can get it together because overall it IS a decent community hospital.They are the first line of emergency care for people who have to be taken off the islands for immediate care and the staff is very friendly.
To Anon @ 7:25pm
I also work there and there are a lot of good people trying hard to take care of our community. If you are aware of any "dirty stuff" going on...make sure you have the facts and report it to your chain of command. Staff often don't have all the information and make a lot of wrong assumptions.
As with other health care facilities, McCready has a policy and procedure about Corporate Compliance. All employees are inserviced in this matter and there is also a compliance hotline for anyone to call in to register any type of issue, such as this. It is every employee's duty to have these issues addressed. The person making these allegations appears to be trying to settle a score. If this individual was in knowledge of any alleged fraud and did nothing about it, I think that makes them a party to the crime. I wonder how many times they called the compliance hotline number to voice a concern.
In response to anon 4:36. I smell sour grapes. The Delmarva Foundation Quality Award comes from outcome driven patient care. There are nationally accepted criteria for certain types of illnesses that are monitored. Kudos to McCready for winning this award and if I'm not mistaken they have won it before. I am sure that there are those at other facilities who are loving this, because it takes a little bit of attention from them.
according to who?
I have done some lookinig into this and have discovered that the story is not accurate. DHHS has no record of any pas t or ongoing investigation into McReady. A source at DHHS also confirms that not only is the hospital not overbilling they are providing may services that they are not even getting properly reimbursed for and will soon submit claims retroactive abck 6 months for bills never submitted to Medicare. News should be just that. If you want to truly be a source of information to the public it would be great. If you just want to be a gossip monger, not so great. I enjoy your blog but am slightly miffed at the lack of veracity in some stories. Also, many of my comments don't get passed through though they contain no foul language or untoward remarks toward you or your contributors. Thank you
The person who submitted this accusation has obviously been in the wrong and is striking back at a fine institution that has always put the patients first. It appears that this person is very vindictive and casts venom from their mouth because of their insubordination. You know that old saying which is oh so true,what goes around comes around.
The ugly rumors that are being spread about Mccready are just that. The disgruntled and vindictive ex-employee should watch how she is throwing poo she may step in it. Slip sliding away, oh happy day.
It is humorous that there are comments on here accusing the blog to be from a "disgruntled ex-employee". Nowhere in the blog did I read the person was or is employed by McCready. It seems to me that some readers may have a guilty conscience about firing someone? I don't know.
I will say that after reading the original post I have done some research on this matter and apparently McCready HAS performed the non-invasive vascular studies and the person that performed them is not licensed. So, I would consider the original post valid if they have billed insurance carriers for these procedures. I have worked in medical billing in the past and this is definitely considered fraud.
If Medicare has been contacted regarding a fraud claim they will not release that information to the general public when they inquire. I do know that any fraud report given is investigated.
If they do find out that these procedures have in fact been done illegally, perhaps the accused "disgruntled employee" will actually be the technician who did the service. Or perhaps a small hospital such as McCready would need to be prepared for extensive penalties, fines and internal investigation.
Either way, if you have had any such procedure done at this hospital I would be a bit concerned that my testing was performed by a non-licensed technician.
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