Dearest readers – check your pending liens.  Does the name American Sleep Medicine mean anything to you?  If it does, you may want to put that checkbook away for now.

The Department of Justice has announced the settlement of an overbilling investigation into American Sleep Medicine’s practices, resulting in a (promised) payment of $15.3 million for improperly billing Medicare (and other Federal Healthcare programs).  No sleep study will be necessary to document the sleep loss that American Sleep Medicine’s owners are probably experiencing.

My readers may recall a different instance of fraud, reported in years gone by.  The main thrust of this matter is that American Sleep Medicine billed for sleep studies, primarily polysomnograhpic diagnostic sleep testing, but without having the initial sleep study be conducted by technicians licensed or certified.

Your humble blogger looked into the matter from the California side.  A memo form the California Department of Public Health, dated October 18, 2010, points out that sleep study staff must be supervised by a registered nurse.  In fact, the memo states “[b]ased on the applicable statutory and regulatory requirements, certified polysomnographic technologists must be supervised by physicians; however, in a GACH [general acute care hospital] registered nurses must also be present to provide ongoing patient assessments.”

A lien search on the EAMS public search tool reflects several liens filed by American Sleep Medicine, typically in the amount of $2,600.

So, dear readers, any luck fighting off these liens?

A very special thanks to Greg Jones of WorkCompCentral for leading your humble blogger on to this story.