More psychotherapy in Illinois than New York

That's what ProPublica found when they looked at group psychotherapy sessions in 2012. Illinois had 290,000, about twice as many as New York. Even stranger, the highest billers were not psychotherapists, they were three ob/gyns and a thoracic surgeon. These four claimed to have had 37,864 sessions that year, more than the total for all providers in the state of California. One ob/gyn alone had 10,400 sessions in 2012, at a cost to Medicare of $207,980. They were reimbursed more than $730,000.

Detroit has a different claim to large billing - the number of sessions per client. A social worker was reimbursed for nearly 5,000 group therapy sessions for her 26 Medicare patients, an average of 190 each. She also billed for 2,820 individual psychotherapy visits for the same 26 patients, who allegedly would have received an average of 298 therapy sessions apiece in 2012.