Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 1, 1994 TAG: 9407010060
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A national chain of psychiatyric hospitals has agreed to pay an unprecedented $379 million in fines and penalties to settle federal charges that it provided unnecessary treatment to tens of thousands of patients to collect insurance money.
National Medical Enterprises Inc. (NME), which owns three Washington-area psychiatric hospitals, entered the agreement with the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services in what was described as the largest health-care fraud settlement in U.S. history.
The settlement marks the latest step in an ongoing three-year civil and criminal probe into company-paid kickbacks to doctors and others in a scam to bilk the government and private insurance companies out of millions of dollars. As part ot the agreement, the company has agreed to divest itself of its 60 psychiatric hospitals and substance-abuse clinics nationwide.
-Washington Post
MCI: Virginia lags in phone 'benefits'
RICHMOND - As New Jersey and Oklahoma opened the market Thursday for toll calls within local telephone areas to competition, MCI renewed its request for the State Corporation Commission to authorize such competition in Virginia.
MCI, a long-distance telephone company based in Washington, D.C., said only Arizona, California and Virginia did not permit competition for so-called ``short-haul toll'' calls, called Local Access Transport Areas.
``Virginia now stands as the only state east of the Mississippi that continues to deny the benefits of an open and competitive intraLATA market to the state's consumers,'' said Donna Sorgi, MCI's Eastern region director of regulatory and government affairs.
Andrea Leeman, an SCC spokeswoman, said MCI's Thursday request will be added to an ongoing case file on intraLATA competition. There are no hearings scheduled on the issue, she said, adding that Sprint filed a request similar to MCI's earlier this month.
-Associated Press
Briefly ...
U.S. stock and financial markets will be closed Monday for the Independence Day holiday. The weekly auction of Treasury bills will be postponed until Tuesday. The Roanoke Times & World-News will not publish financial tables Tuesday; they will resume in Wednesday's editions.
Contel Cellular of Virginia has opened a retail store at Lakeside Plaza shopping center, Salem. The store specializes in cellular phones and mobile data accessories.
by CNB