The combined might of the University of Pittsburgh, the UPMC Health System and 18 physician group practice plans run by Pitt's medical school have agreed to pay $17 million to the federal and state governments in order to settle charges that Pitt physicians overbilled Medicare and Medicaid.

The whopping $17 million dollar payment, announced in a press release from the U.S. attorney's office is the similar to the figure that was under discussion when word of negotiations between Pitt and the federal prosecutor's office made news reports in February.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a UPMC spokeswoman stated that the overbillings were an administrative error, and the audit that led to the settlement showed no evidence of fraud.

Earlier, the spokeswoman had sad that the $17 million represented about 3 percent of total physician billings from 1991 through the middle of 1996.

The settlement was made apparent from an audit of the practice plans during that period, which bill insurers for care that doctors from Pitt's medical school provide to patients at UPMC.

That particular audit was part of an investigation that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers Medicare, began more than two years ago to weed out cases in which doctors at academic medical centers were billing the government for services that were actually performed by medical residents.

Medicare pays teaching institutions for training new physicians and provides money for their salaries.

The audit program is controversial because academic medical centers claim Medicare has historically not required a faculty doctor to be physically present with a resident to be able to bill separately for some services.

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