Financial Reporting
We will ensure that accounting and financial records are accurate, clear, and complete-
This means that each member of the campus community entrusted with handling financial and business matters
- Conducts business in a manner that ensures that University accounting and financial records and documents are accurate, clear and complete
Perspective: A Real World Illustration
A July 2005 Seattle Times newspaper article reported on a multimillion-dollar billing scandal at a public university medical school located in the state of Washington.
A special review panel's report called for more oversight of the university's medical school, citing the "embarrassing" lessons of a five-year federal investigation into the overbilling of Medicare and Medicaid.
The billing scandal led to a criminal investigation in which two doctors were convicted of felonies and the university paid $27 million in legal costs and a record $35 million civil penalty for overbilling the government.
The report concluded that medical-school administrators repeatedly failed to recognize overbilling that benefited university doctors and medical programs.
The "ultimate accountability" rested with the medical-school dean, the six-member committee said, although it said blame also must be shared by those who intentionally over billed the government and other administrators who failed to exercise adequate oversight.
In its report, the committee said the university has made significant improvements in its billing programs but needs to take more steps to instill a "culture of compliance."
The report said many physicians and staff members made "honest efforts to comply with billing requirements." But some doctors ignored tighter billing rules adopted by the government in the mid-1990s, the panel said.
The committee found no evidence of a conspiracy to overbill the government or intentionally disregard problems, but administrators in the billing group for many of the university doctors, "did not consistently respond adequately to billing allegations with investigations and disciplined enforcement," the report said.
Administrators failed to recognize the severity of initial problems and apparently didn't bring them to the attention of top officials at the medical school, the report added.
The committee said "complacency" about the university's compliance with federal rules led to a false belief that the university met or exceeded industry standards.
The university agreed last year to pay $35 million, the largest penalty ever for a teaching hospital in the United States, to resolve allegations in a whistle-blower's lawsuit alleging it had submitted inflated bills to Medicare and Medicaid throughout the 1990s.
The civil settlement followed a lengthy federal criminal investigation triggered by the suit, in which two prominent university doctors pleaded guilty to felonies.
The criminal investigation focused on allegations that university doctors routinely billed the government for surgeries and treatments performed by medical residents who are not allowed to bill Medicare and Medicaid.
Prosecutors also reviewed allegations that doctors billed the government for services that were more expensive than the treatment actually performed.
The whistle-blower suit was filed in 1999 by a former university billing employee, but not unsealed until the civil settlement was reached last year. The federal government joined the suit, allowing him to collect $7.25 million of the settlement.
Last Revised 5/23/2006