Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has ordered the state's Agency for Health Care Administration to investigate another 98 hospitals for allegedly receiving higher reimbursements from Medicaid than they are legally entitled to receive, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Gov. Scott lists the 129 hospitals being audited in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, but it is unclear from Scott's letter to Bondi why more hospitals were added, according to The Miami Herald.
In his letter to the attorney general, Gov. Scott said hospitals are audited for one of three reasons, according to The Miami Herald: they failed to certify their contracts, they submitted the requested financial information after the deadline or their responses merit further scrutiny. All Florida hospitals will also be subject to random audits.
Twenty-nine of the hospitals failed to respond to a request for information about their Medicaid contracts by the designated deadline, while the others "warrant an audit to verify compliance with state law because of the nature of the explanations they provided in their responses," Gov. Scott's letter says.
Audits for 31 hospitals were announced earlier this month. The new list of hospitals Gov. Scott finds subject to investigation was compiled after AHCA conducted initial reviews of information submitted by hospitals, according to the report.
Several of the hospitals undergoing audits are part of Nashville, Tenn.-based Hospital Corporation of America. Gov. Scott previously served as CEO of Columbia/HCA until resigning in 1997 following allegations of fraudulent billing to Medicare and Medicaid. HCA paid $1.7 billion to settle the allegations.