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Adventist Health System Agrees To Pay $5.4M For Overbilling

Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.
The Florida Channel
Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.

 Florida Hospital’s parent company settled allegations Thursday that it over-billed the federal government. The alleged fraud took place from 2010 to 2013.

Adventist Health System agreed to pay $5.4 million to settle the allegations.

Adventist was accused of billing cancer treatments that weren’t directly supervised by an oncologist.

The overbilling happened at nine hospitals, mostly in Central Florida.

“We will not tolerate providers recklessly cutting corners, particularly when furnishing such critical medical services as radiation oncology,” said U.S. Attorney A. Lee Bentley of Florida in a statement.

The hospital did not admit wrongdoing with the settlement.

In a statement, hospital spokeswoman Samantha Kearns O’Lenick said Adventist Health takes federal oversight very seriously and is pleased to reach an agreement.

“It is important to note we do not believe there is evidence that the care of any patient was impacted by the legal issues in dispute,” O’Lenick said.

WMFE is a partner with Health News Florida, which receives support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Health News Florida reporter Abe Aboraya works for WMFE in Orlando. He started writing for newspapers in high school. After graduating from the University of Central Florida in 2007, he spent a year traveling and working as a freelance reporter for the Seattle Times and the Seattle Weekly, and working for local news websites in the San Francisco Bay area. Most recently Abe worked as a reporter for the Orlando Business Journal. He comes from a family of health care workers.