Arthur Fried, a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the New York office, and Alaap Shah and Colin McCulloch, Associates in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the Washington, DC, office, co-wrote an article titled "The Unbalanced EHR Equation: Meaningful Use Incentives + Increased Reimbursement = Increased Risk of Audits."
Following is an excerpt:
Electronic health record (EHR) technology has the potential of improving the U.S. healthcare delivery system. Despite years of promoting widespread implementation of EHR systems in an effort to realize quality and efficiency improvements, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), Office of Inspector General (OIG), and the Attorney General (AG) recently sent a chill through the industry by signaling that providers adopting and using EHRs may have obtained incentive payments and increased reimbursement through possible fraud. As a consequence, providers that have adopted and use EHRs face increased risk of governmental audits, recoupment of incentive payments and reimbursement, and other possible civil and criminal liability.
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