The biggest physical rehabilitation company in East Tennessee is paying two governments $1.8 million to settle allegations that it improperly billed Medicare and Medicaid programs for physical therapy services in the past.
Benchmark Rehabilitation Partners, an Ooltewah-based company that operates 79 facilities and has more than 400 employees, called the settlement “painful.” But company officials insist that the previous problems involved inadvertent coding errors that have since been corrected and there were no concerns over the quality of treatment.
The penalty shouldn’t affect the future of the growing, 15-year-old company, according to Charlotte Davis, chief compliance officer.
“There were documentation and coding errors that occurred from 2001 and 2006, but during this entire time there was never any compromise of patient care,” she said. “We know that the settlement is pretty painful for us as a company, but we’re looking at our future and the communities that we serve.”
In an announcement of the penalty agreement, U.S. Attorney Russ Dedrick said a 2006 civil investigation of the company’s billing records found that Benchmark Rehabilitation improperly submitted claims for therapeutic exercise for TennCare and Medicare patients when medical records indicated that the patients had actually received the more restrictive aquatic therapy.