Medicare billing flagged at 4 percent of U.S. pharmacies

The HHS report singled out several areas of the country where pharmacies irregularly billed Medicare with extremely high amounts per beneficiary. For instance, in Miami, nearly one in five pharmacies had questionable billings in 2009.

Medicare billing flagged at 4 percent of U.S. pharmacies: government | Reuters:

"The Office of Inspector General (OIG) examined billing records from 2009, the most recent full-year data was available. Government inspectors used eight measures to review the pharmacies, including average amount billed per beneficiary, average amount billed per prescriber and percentage of prescriptions for painkillers and other controlled substances that have the potential to be abused.

In total, 2,637 retail pharmacies were found to have exceeded the threshold that indicated extremely high billing for at least one of the eight measures."

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