Florida-based Pediatrix Medical Group, which provides pediatric physicians and nursing services to 32 states, last week agreed to pay $25 million to settle a 2002 lawsuit that claimed the company improperly billed state Medicaid programs, the Baltimore Sun reports. U.S. attorneys Rod Rosenstein and Troy Eid -- along with Medicaid fraud controls in Maryland, Colorado and three other states -- had investigated Pediatrix's billing practices. The investigation found that Pediatrix from January 1996 through December 1999 billed state Medicaid programs for critical care for infants who were not critically ill, Rosenstein said in a statement. As many as one-third of the infants Pediatrix employees labeled as critically ill on admission to neonatal intensive-care units were not critically ill, the statement said. Pediatrix denied any wrongdoing. Company spokesperson Bob Kneeley said, "There was no concerted effort to do anything outside the rules and regulations" (Birch, Baltimore Sun, 9/22).

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