A nationwide anesthesia business based in Harrison has sued a billing company for $33 million for allegedly mishandling collections.
Somnia Inc. accused Coronis Health of breach of contract, in a complaint filed on April 23 in Westchester Supreme Court.
“Coronis turned out to be grossly incapable of handling the contracted-for-services,” the complaint states, “performed significantly worse in comparison to when Somnia performed these functions in-house, and cost Somnia and its practices tens of millions of dollars in lost collections.”
Somnia is a privately held company founded in 1996 that manages anesthesiology services at more than a hundred surgery centers and medical offices across the country. It was based in New Rochelle and moved to Harrison around 2018.
Coronis Health, of Sykesville, Maryland, is a revenue cycle management company, created in 2022 by a venture capital firm that merged similar businesses.
Somnia hired Medac Inc., one of the companies that later merged into Coronis, in 2017, to manage the logistics of every encounter between doctors and patients.
Doctors and medical practices have to be credentialed, according to the complaint, to receive payments from government insurers such as Medicare and commercial insurers such as UnitedHealthcare. Information about patients is collected. Services are coded. Claims are submitted to insurers. Bills are collected. Denials of claims are appealed.
Somnia claims that problems emerged around mid-2022, after the merger that created Coronis. The new company was not staffed or trained properly, Somnia says, and collections dropped.
For instance, Coronis allegedly failed to handle enrollment and credentialling of physicians with numerous insurers, resulting in more than $8.8 million in losses.
Healthcare insurers require claims for payments to be submitted anywhere from 20 to 60 day. After Coronis eliminated nearly half of its billing team in 2023, the complaint states, processing delays resulted in millions of dollars in untimely claims that had to be written off.
When Coronis implemented a new billing system in 2024, poor training and oversight led to lower collections and Coronis allegedly concealed shortages by making it appear as if the correct amounts had been paid.
Somnia terminated the agreement at the end of 2024 and took over the collections process. Then Coronis allegedly refused to return electronic health information and data used for collections as well as for records requests from patients, healthcare providers and regulators.
Somnia is asking the court to make Coronis pay at least $33 million and to return all electronic health information.
Coronis did not reply to a message asking for its side of the story.
