Austin, Texas-based Advanced Pain Care and its founder Mark Malone, MD, have agreed to pay $13.6 million to resolve allegations of submitting false claims to federal and state healthcare programs for urine drug testing, the Justice Department said in a Dec. 18 news release.
What happened?
- Advanced Pain Care, an interventional pain medicine group with locations in and around Austin, Amarillo, Waco and Houston, was accused of billing for both presumptive and definitive urine drug tests for the same patient on the same date without determining if further testing was necessary.
- The settlement also resolves claims that the practice improperly billed the Department of Veterans Affairs for definitive drug testing by using individual CPT between Jan. 3, 2017, and Dec. 31, 2021.
- Numerous related entities joined the settlement, including multiple ASCs, pharmacies and management companies affiliated with Dr. Malone.
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