Dallas Pays Millions To Settle Medicare Fraud Charges

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - The City of Dallas is paying the federal and state governments nearly $2.5 million for allegedly defrauding Medicare and Medicaid.

U.S. Attorney James Jacks announced the settlement in a news release Tuesday.

The settlement is the result of a whistleblower lawsuit from 2009.

Jacks and the State of Texas say Dallas' scheme involved ambulance calls.

Most ambulance services, Jacks says, are labeled one of two ways: either basic life support (BLS) or advanced life support (ALS).  Medicare and Medicaid reimburse for ALS calls at a higher rate than BLS calls.

Jacks says the city told its billing contractor to apply the ALS label to every ambulance transport dispatched by 911, regardless of whether the patient actually needed the advanced services.  The result, Jacks says, was that the city billed Medicare and Medicaid for more ALS calls than it actually performed.

The whistleblower, Douglas Moore, is a former employee of Dallas' auditing department.  Under federal and state laws he is entitled to as much as 30% of the money recovered.

The city doesn't admit that it did anything wrong, but it's paying the $2.47 million to get rid of the allegations.