Category: Healthcare
The Justice Department announced on Monday, July 2, 2012 that GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to pay $3 billion in settlements and to plead guilty to criminal charges related to its branding, safety disclosures and price reporting of several drugs. This is the largest fraud settlement in U.S. history to date.
GlaxoSmithKline will pay $1.8 billion to resolve criminal and civil liabilities for off-label marketing,
The Department of Justice announced that the United States Government will receive $8,999,999 from AHS Hospital Corp., Atlantic Health System Inc., and Overlook Hospital, located in New Jersey to resolve False Claims Act allegations. The hospital falsely overbilled Medicare for patients that were considered outpatient or observation patients. The case was filed by former employees of Overlook Hospital and the settlement of $8,999,999,
The United States government will collect $6.1 million from Hospice Care of Kansas LLC and its parent company, Ft. Worth, Texas-based Voyager HospiceCare Inc. as a result to resolve False Claims Act allegations. Former Hospice Care of Kansas nurse, Beverly Landis, under the qui tam, or whistleblower, provisions of the False Claims Act revealed that the hospice company was submitting false claims over a course of four years to Medicare for beneficiaries that did not have a terminal prognosis of six months or less.
The United States Government will collect $5.4 million from the notional ambulance company, Rural/Metro Corp, to settle False Claims Act allegations. The ambulance company was accused of Medicare fraud, which was brought to light by Carl Crawley under seal in U.S. District Court. Daily, Mr. Crawley had witnessed various necessary Medicare documents being forged to bill Medicare and Medicaid for services that did not occur or that were unnecessary.
The United States Government collected $5 million from Christus Spohn Health System Corporation to resolve allegations of improperly admitting patients, which were filed under the False Claims Act.
Located in Texas, six hospitals of the Christus Spohn Health System Corporation falsely claimed outpatients as inpatients to be able to send false billings to Medicare.
The US Justice Department announced an agreement has been reached with Orthofix, Inc. to resolve civil and criminal charges brought as a result of a whistleblower action initiated by Jeffrey Bierman, a Midwest healthcare consultant.
Orthofix manufactures and distributes bone growth stimulators under various trade names. Orthofix was charged with having sales representatives fill out Medicare required Certificates of Medical Necessity without the requisite input from the treating physicians,
St. Jude Medical Inc., a medical device company based out of Little Canada, Minnesota, agreed to pay $3.65 million to the federal government to settle False Claims Act allegations that it falsely inflated the price of pacemakers and defibrillators sold to the government.
According to the to the Justice Department,
Hospice Family Care Inc., a hospice company based out of Mesa, Arizona, has agreed to pay $3.7 million to the federal government to settle allegations that it submitted false claims to Medicare. The company and its former owners, Nancy Smith and Nancy Turner, agreed to settle allegations that it sought payments from Medicare for patients who were ineligible or partially ineligible for hospice care and for billing Medicare for a higher level of care than what was medically necessary for certain patients.
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York has announced that Lenox Hill Hospital will pay $11.75 million dollars to settle a civil health care fraud lawsuit.
The federal government accused Lenox Hospital of fraudulently inflating its charges for services provided to Medicare patients in order to obtain higher supplemental reimbursements that Medicare pays to health care providers in cases where the cost of care is unusually high.
On May 3, 2012, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee announced that a number of dialysis centers in the Knoxville, Tennessee area had agreed to pay $4.36 million to resolve allegations that they had violated the federal False Claims Act, the Tennessee Medicaid False Claims Act and other federal and state laws and regulations.
