Hospitals must repay €275 million

In 2012 and 2013 hospitals sent in 276 million euro in false claims. An investigation shows that 1.2 percent of the revenue was not declared properly. There are currently discussions on how that money should be paid back to the insurers. This is according to an investigation into the hospitals' accounts, reported Minister Edith Schippers of Public Health on Thursday. Schippers emphasized that they found no fraud, but that the errors are due to the complicated declaration rules. A spokesperson for the ministry announced on Thursday that the health insurers will use the money to reduce premiums in 2016. Patients who think that they were wrongly billed in those years and thereby used their own risk, can contact their insurer to figure out if they are eligible for compensation. Now that the problems with the declarations are clear, the hospitals can get their financial statements approved. Earlier this year the Dutch Institute of Chartered Accountants warned that the auditors can not approve the financial statements of hospitals and university medical centers for 2013, because of the many ambiguities. In the past two years hospitals moved to a new billing system. Special rules were applied to prevent the hospitals getting into financial problems due to the change. From 2012 hospitals also did not receive a fixed budget for their work. Instead they are paid per completed treatment. But the revenue turned out to be difficult to determine during the transition years.