http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-prime-healthcare-20160525-snap-story.html

The U.S. Justice Department has joined a whistle-blower case against Prime Healthcare Services, adding significant weight to allegations of widespreadMedicare overbilling at 14 of the company’s hospitals in California. A Los Angeles magistrate judge granted the agency’s request to intervene in the case Tuesday, one day after the government declared in a court filing that its investigation of the Ontario- hospital operator has “yielded sufficient evidence” that the facilities “submitted or caused the submission of claims to Medicare for unnecessary inpatient stays.”  Prime finds itself under federal scrutiny because of a whistle-blower complaint submitted in 2011 by Karin Berntsen, a registered nurse and director of quality and risk management at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Berntsen’s lawsuit accuses Prime of routinely making Medicare patients’ illnesses seem more severe than they really were in order to justify billing for additional services and increasing hospital admissions.