What Should Clinicians Do When Health Services Are Improperly Billed in Their Names?

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services mandates physicians’ responsibility for making sure that reimbursement for services physicians provide to patients is accurate and appropriate. Yet the shift of physician practice ownership to various employment models has amplified a dilemma. Physicians working as employees for some US health care companies might not know about services billed in their name, much less be able to review or contest when, which, to whom, or at what costs services were billed. Although such practices violate legal standards, many employed physicians are now accountable without transparency or agency. This commentary on a case considers this set of problems in contemporary billing and reimbursement structure and practice.