Agnesian Healthcare Inc., a health system based in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, filed a lawsuit against Cerner Corp. for breach of warranty and fraud after claiming issues in its billing software resulted in losses of more than $16 million, according to reporting by The Kansas City Business Journal.
In a complaint filed Sept. 15 in Fond du Lac County Circuit Court, Agnesian claimed problems with Cerner's revenue cycle system began immediately after its installation, the Kansas City Business Journal article stated, resulting in in “pervasive errors” in patient billing statements. Agnesian said it had paid $300,000 for the software, which went live in 2015.
“The hospital system said it had to send out payment statements by hand due to issues with the software, resulting in a large backlog of unprocessed statements, some of which ended as write-offs. In total, Agnesian claimed the problem resulted in losses of at least $16 million and continuing costs of $200,000 per month,” Kansas City Business Journal reporter Elise Reuter reported in the article.
According to the compliant, in 2016, Cerner said it had fixed the problem, but in 2017, Agnesian discovered additional coding errors that “resulted in large numbers of undetected write-offs of claims made to insurance companies and other payers,” Reuter wrote in the article.
As a result of these issues, Agnesian said it may take until 2018 for its billing process to return to normal, and the hospital may not be able to meet federally mandated billing requirements, Reuter reported, according to court documents.
Agnesian is seeking direct and indirect damages, as well as punitive damages, and the cancellation of the contract. The case was transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
