re: Woman has COVID listed on death certificate—family says she never tested +

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So the $175 billion in the first Cares act designated for hospitals didn't go to hospitals?

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This a non-sequitor, what the guy said happened was that hospitals got paid money for COVID deaths. That is not true. Do you think it's true?

Where are you getting your information about CARES?
The Cares Act and there were a couple of phases of that, gave money to hospitals in bulk based on a couple of alogrithms devised by HHS. Nothing in CARES says anything about a $39K death benefit. And none of the money was allocated based on the number of COVID patients the hospital had.

The first phase of CARES didn't even take into account the amount COVID activity in the hospital or even the area the hospital served. CARES $$ were allocated strictly based only on relative Medicare market share using figures from two years ago. So hospitals in New York with hundreds of active COVID patients got orders of magnitude less money than large systems in the midwest and mountain west, many of those systems had seen next to no COVID patients. The second much smaller round did a little better and targeted the money toward high-risk areas, rural areas, safety-net hospitals, and post-acute care providers.

At no point was any apportionment CARES money based on the number of COVID patients the hospital had. Who is telling you guys this stuff?

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This a non-sequitor, what the guy said happened was that hospitals got paid money for COVID deaths. That is not true. Do you think it's true?

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Actually, it's a question.

I don't care about the $39K per death or case or whatever (though have seen it enough places I guess I do wonder where it comes from).

I'm pointing out that $175 billion (and promise for more) is a lot of cash and like every other time the federal government pukes cash at an industry, lots of people get rich. How the game is played? - you probably know better than me given you are in the industry.

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Well if you say a person has covid and they don't your treatment cost don't go up.

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I'm trying to follow your argument. Are you suggesting now that hospitals, in addition to inappropriately classifying patients as COVID+, are also faking treatment too? Like they're admitting patients and then putting them in the room and doing nothing with them? Or are you saying that they randomly tagging a guy in for appendicitis with a COVID+ code? In both cases, they're going to need dozens of people in on the fraud that they can't easily compensate. In both cases, the clinical documentation integrity software would flag it. In both cases, the Payer still gets to audit the charts. Finally, as I said before, why go through that trouble when ordering a random chest x-ray nets the bottom line more money. As a secondary diagnosis code, COVID doesn't pay much.

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Additionally, there are people being listed as covid patient that do not.

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In hospitals, today? Nah. It would be hard to justify having a COVID code on an inpatient without a confirmation lab given how COVID tests aren't in shortage anymore. Payers would immediately push back if they saw it, but they wouldn't because the hospital's clinical documentation integrity software would flag it. And someone would give the patient a test.

Something tells me he has a vested interest in it.
You know what they say about the bit dog barking loudest.

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What you are describing is called upcoding and it a relatively common form of fraud but it's really hard to systematically pull off at a hospital because too many people would need to be involved, I'm talking dozens and dozens. Further, the groups you're ripping off are Payers and they audit us all the time.
Finally, if hospitals wanted to get paid off from COVID phenomenon they do waaay more unnecessary chest CTs or something like that. Upcoding is super easy to catch, but ordering unnecessary tests is the tried and true method.

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I enjoy your posts, but you are being disingenuous, as usual. The above quote would be true if it was relevant; it is not. Of course insurance companies are on the lookout for fraud, but is the Federal Government? That’s who the “Payer” is here.

I don’t traffic in conspiracies very often, but as Kissinger is reputed to have said, “Even paranoids have enemies.” Fraud resulting in over counting deaths from China virus is certainly occurring. I don’t think it matters much. If all the graphs were shifted down 10% they would still look much the same.

Every COVID-19 US death should be investigated with a specific name attached and verified by the family, the family doctor, and the coroner.

All hospital, CDC, and health organization statistics should be purged.

This audit should be enforced by Presidential Executive Order.

It is less than 200,000 deaths and the cost and time would be negligible and the accurate number would pay dividends.

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Where are you getting that number? Hospitals get an add on payment, but it’s DRG based on the primary diagnosis.

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Yeah...it's only an extra $30 grand if they wind up on a ventilator.

Then you tell me, Why would the doctor/hospital lie about someone dying because of/with Covid?

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There is a monetary incentive for federal money reimbursement if you treat a COVID patient.

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This sounds more pernicious than the reality. There is a monetary incentive to treat diabetics too. The bump in reimbursement you get from having a COVID + code in the medical record isn't that much in a relative sense. Certainly not enough to commit an easily detectable fraud. And I keep saying this because it's true, in aggregate, hospitals lose money on COVID patients. They're dogs financially.