Health insurer Cigna is paying more than $172 million to settle allegations that it committed fraud by knowingly submitting inaccurate diagnoses of its Medicare Advantage members, the company and Department of Justice announced Saturday.
The settlement stems from a wide-ranging government investigation into the coding practices of Medicare Advantage insurers, as well as a specific whistleblower lawsuit against Cigna that the DOJ joined last year.
That lawsuit alleged Cigna’s home visit program “regularly generated false and invalid diagnosis codes for certain serious, complex conditions that cannot be reliably diagnosed in a home setting and without extensive diagnostic testing or imaging,” the DOJ said.
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