Cigna wants Palo Pinto General Hospital in Mineral Wells, Texas, to return $954,000 it paid the hospital as part of a pass-through billing scheme uncovered earlier this year, according to the Mineral Wells Index.
Hospital leaders are cooperating with the FBI in its investigation of the questionable billing practices, which involved lab and billing companies submitting claims to insurers through PPGH for testing services that weren't performed at the hospital. PPGH didn't submit any of the questionable bills and has terminated contracts with the lab and billing companies involved in the scheme, according to the report.
After the controversial billing practices were uncovered, PPGH set aside funds to cover requests for reimbursement, such as the one from Cigna.
"We are not looking at that money as income," Rhett Warren, legal counsel for the Palo Pinto County Hospital District, told the Mineral Wells Index. "The hospital has no [financial] loss at this point in time and we don't expect it will."
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