Prosecutors said the medical practice billed Medicare and Virginia Medicaid more than $600,000 for asthma treatments it did not purchase or improperly administered to patients between January 2010 and January 2017.
In a March 2 U.S. Justice Department news release, prosecutors allege the medical practice submitted improper billings for Xolair, an asthma treatment sold in single-use vials. According to prosecutors, Allergy and Asthma Associates administered amounts of the drug left over in their vials to different patients and billed Medicare and Medicaid for administering the leftover amount as if it were the entire single-use vial.
Prosecutors said the scheme resulted in Allergy and Asthma Associates improperly billing Medicare and Medicaid $627,540 for Xolair that it didn’t purchase. The medical practice also received 129 vials of Xolair from Medicaid which were not documented as being used for a Medicaid patient, resulting in an $88,878 loss to Medicaid, according to the Justice Department.
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