Upper Allegheny Health System (UAHS) has agreed to pay $2.7 million to resolve False Claim Act allegations related to dental clinics it operates in Western New York and Pennsylvania. U.S. Attorney.
Updated: 12:03 PM EDT May 25, 2021
OLEAN, N.Y. A health care system has agreed to pay nearly $3 million for allegedly submitting false claims to Medicaid for dental services using tools that were not properly cleaned.
Upper Allegheny Health Systems, which operates several dental clinics in the Southern Tier and Pennsylvania, will pay $2.7 million to resolve False Claim Act allegations. The federal government will receive about $1.3 million of that settlement.
Investigators say Upper Allegheny Health Systems submitted false claims between April 2010 and May 2015 for dental services that were performed using handpieces that were not properly sterilized.
They say Upper Allegheny Health Systems directed personnel to use CaviWipes to clean handpieces between patients.
A Southern Tier health care system to pay $2.7 million for alleged use of unsterilized dental tools
Getty
and last updated 2021-05-25 12:20:03-04
NEW YORK (WKBW) â A Southern Tier health care system has agreed to pay $2.7 million for the alleged use of unsterilized dental tools.
The U.S. Attorney s Office says Upper Allegheny Health System (UAHS), a health care system that operates several dental clinics in the Southern Tier and Pennsylvania, has agreed to pay the $2.7 million to resolve False Claim Act allegations.
Between April 1, 2010, and May 31, 2015, UAHS allegedly submitted false claims to Medicaid for dental services that were performed using dental tools that were not appropriately sterilized.
Attorney General James Teams With Federal Prosecutors to Make Dental Clinics Agree to Pay $2.7 Million for Alleged Use of Unsterilized Tools
NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that her office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU), together with the United States Attorney’s Office in the Western District of New York and Pennsylvania, has reached an agreement with a health care system operating several clinics in the Southern Tier of New York and Pennsylvania for allegedly treating patients with unsterilized and potentially dangerous tools. An agreement unsealed yesterday with the Upper Allegheny Health System (UAHS) a domestic not-for-profit corporation that operates several dental clinics in the Southern Tier resolved claims made by a former employee alleging that UAHS billed Medicaid for dental services where it failed to sterilize dental handpieces between patients. As part of the agreement, UAHS has agreed to pay $2.7 million
5:33
Kathy Masisak, 68, doesn’t want to live in a community without robust medical care. But her local hospital in rural McKean County has been downsizing for years, and she said it’s affecting her family.
“They took a maternity ward away last year, and my granddaughter had to go to Olean which is 35, 40 minutes away in an emergency situation to deliver that baby,” Masisak said. “I was panicking the whole time going over there to see her.”
Masisak lives in Lewis Run, a borough seven miles south of Bradford, where the Bradford Regional Medical Center is about to lose even more services, including departments for acute care and surgery.