Between 1990 and 1994, federal auditors estimated, Jefferson overbilled the government by $6 million. Prosecutors and Jefferson officials arrived at the settlement figure by doubling that amount.
Jefferson said in a statement that it regretted the billing errors and said it was taking steps to avoid their happening again. It also said federal regulations had been vague and had since been clarified.
The investigation arose from last year's audit of the University of Pennsylvania's teaching physicians' practice, which agreed to pay more than $30 million to settle civil charges that it overbilled Medicare.
The Jefferson probe, conducted by independent auditors under government supervision, identified ``similar problems'' to those found at Penn, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Margaret L. Hutchinson.
``This audit confirms our concern that these problems will appear at different teaching hospitals.''
In April, federal auditors announced they had chosen six more Pennsylvania hospitals for similar inquiries: Jefferson, Graduate Hospital, Temple University Hospital, Albert Einstein Medical Center, the Medical College of Pennsylvania-Hahnemann University Hospital, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
They have since broadened the probe to potentially include all of the nation's 125 academic medical centers. In addition, Hutchinson said, all 1,200 institutions that receive Medicare money for graduate medical education may be audited.
Since the Penn case, the government has suggested that teaching hospitals hire accountants to conduct their own audits, using standards designed by federal examiners. By doing that, hospitals could face lighter penalties if they were found to be violating federal guidelines.
Jefferson took the government up on its offer, and its penalty was double the amount of overbilling - not triple as was Penn's.
