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Inova agrees to pay nearly .4 million after allegations of improper Medicaid claims
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Inova agrees to pay nearly $2.4 million after allegations of improper Medicaid claims

On Friday, prosecutors announced a settlement in which one of the largest health care systems in the D.C. area agreed to pay nearly $2.4 million for claims it falsely submitted to Medicaid.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Falls Church-based Inova voluntarily disclosed in written statements that over a period of several years, Inova submitted improperly amended claims with false information to Medicaid.

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The incorrect claims were submitted between January 1, 2020 and August 31, 2022.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says Inova conducted an internal investigation and found it improperly received about $1.6 million in Medicaid.

The settlement agreement says that “one or more” Inova employees requested that documents for sterilization and hysterectomy procedures be improperly changed, causing them to contain false information.

In the settlement agreement, there is a list of 585 payments from Medicaid that Inova determined should be reimbursed.

They range from very large to very small amounts: one of the claims listed involves $32,114.97 paid through Medicaid, and many others are fees as low as $5.67.