On October 8, 2019, a judge in the United States District Court for the Central District of California granted a stay and certified two questions for interlocutory appeal in relator Integra Med Analytics’ FCA suit against Providence Health & Services, its affiliates, and J.A. Thomas and Associates, Inc., a clinical documentation consultant. The case involves allegations that Providence perpetrated an upcoding scheme whereby it trained its doctors to describe medical conditions with language that would support increasing the severity levels of the DRGs that Providence reported to Medicare, leading to inflated Medicare reimbursements.
