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One of the highest-billing doctors in the Medicare program is implicated in two whistleblower lawsuits that allege he billed for unnecessary services and provided kickback to patients. This week, the Justice Department joined those lawsuits.
A report from the District of Columbia-based law firm Epstein Becker Green reveals important False Claims Act litigation developments within the healthcare industry in 2014. The report comes on the heels of a record-setting $5.7 billion in False Claims Act recoveries announced by the Department of Justice last month.
December has been a month filled with pharmacy fraud arrests, convictions and court cases. Phramacy fraud activity and allegations involving repackaged drugs, alleged kickbacks, along with whistleblower award litigation, were reported in Ohio, Maryland, Michigan, Illinois and California.
The federal government obtained $5.69 billion in settlements and judgments from civil cases involving false claims and fraud this year, and about 40 percent of that total involved healthcare programs, former HHS Inspector General Richard Kusserow reported.
Hospice fraud allegations keep drawing the eye of federal investigators, as evidenced by a recent conviction and the government's intervention in a False Claims Act lawsuit.
Implementing the federal False Claims Act resulted in $5.69 billion in recoveries in fiscal 2014, nearly $3 billion of it linked to whistleblower lawsuits, WOWT NBC News reported. Underlying these cumulative results, recent headlines describe the workings of the law in fraud cases successfully and unsuccessfully brought.
Joe White, former chief financial officer at Tyler, Texas-based Shelby Regional Medical Center, pleaded guilty Nov. 12 to making a false statement to the government in order to obtain incentive payments under the Medicare Meaning Use program.
DaVita Healthcare Partners Inc. agreed to pay $350 million and forfeit another $39 million to settle allegations of paying kickbacks for patient referrals in violation of the False Claims Act the Department of Justice announced. DaVita is a Denver-based dialysis provider serving nearly 170,000 patients nationwide, according to The Denver Post.
Our Lady of Lourdes Memorial Hospital in Binghamton, New York, paid more than $3 million to resolve False Claims Act liability stemming from its Medicare billing, the U.S. Attorney's office for the Northern District of New York announced.
The power of whistleblowers to expose fraud is growing in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, according to a Live Science article by attorney Neil Getnick. "Whistleblower laws and cases are not only here to stay," Getnick wrote, "but their impact is about to get even greater."
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