According to a federal report released November 2012, it appears that nursing homes have been involved in a process called “up coding”, and about 25% of charges from nursing homes are wrong.  Up coding means that nursing homes are inflating their bills to Medicare and the overcharges are adding $1.5 billion a year to Medicare costs.  An article in the Wall Street Journal reports that the majority of the overcharges involve claims from facilities that provide specialized care for more intensive services than actually were provided.  The study also found that in some cases, nursing homes were providing inappropriate treatments for the sole purpose of additional billing.

Read the complete article published by Kaiser Health News by clicking here.