re: Zachary lab owner faces Medicare, Medicaid fraud charges

quote:

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In 2016, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services alleged that the patients of the MedComp Sciences lab were in “immediate jeopardy,” based on a surprise inspection of the lab by federal employees in July of that year.

The Department of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in court filings that the Zachary company failed to refrigerate urine samples properly or correctly label the samples and also failed to ensure the samples were free from debris before testing, the Advocate reported then.

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I don't understand how he ran the lab after 2016. The initial charges "failed to refrig urine samples properly, correctly label, and ensuring the samples were free from debris" can literally be found in every lab in the USA. An inspector can go through a thousand specimens and if one label was partially torn and part of id missing, then its a write up and the write up will always sound like you did this on every spec. Failing to refrig properly can literally mean you failed to write a sentence on one out of 15 urine tests in your procedure manual. Free of debris? Urine will accumulate "debris" before and after testing....maybe they simply didn't document a centrifugation.

Bottom line is that the CEO was stupid if he thought they weren't in the feds crosshairs. You get a surprise inspection from CLIA and you just bend over and take it and correct all the "mistakes". I've restarted several labs that were close to being shut down and one that was. It was eye-opening, but none of the labs in reality, turned out incorrect work.

But as far as improper billing etc. Sounds really bad.