Endo Health and its subsidiary Endo Pharmaceuticals will pay $192 million to settle false claims act after whistleblower uncovered off-label marketing of Lidoderm. The FDA only approved Lidoderm for treatment of a complication of shingles. The company required its sales staff to market the drug for unapproved ailments including low-back pain and carpal tunnel syndrome.
Memorial Hospital of Ohio recently settled government claims related to improper referrals under the Anti-kickback and Stark statutes. These statutes restrict the financial incentives that health care providers can provide to other health care providers. The allegations concerned Memorial Hospital’s financial arrangement with a joint venture it had with a pain management physician and a relationship with an ophthalmologist who sold intraocular lenses at inflated prices through the hospital.
Hospice Compassus settle false claims allegations for $3.92 million, $700,000 of which will be shared by two whistleblowers. The whistleblowers filed suit under the false claims act alleging that the hospice company sought reimbursement under Medicare for hospice care for ineligible patients.
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For the fifth year in a row, federal fraud prevention efforts have seen an increase in the amount of money which has been recovered from individuals and companies who attempted to defraud federal health programs serving seniors or who sought to obtain payments to which they were not entitled. A record $4.3 billion dollars was recovered this past fiscal year.
Doshi Diagnostic Imaging Services, P.C., and Diagnostic Imaging Group, LLC, one of the largest medical imaging providers in the United States, has agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle several whistleblower allegations that they violated the federal False Claims Act and similar state statutes by improperly billing the Medicare and Medicaid Programs for diagnostic imaging studies that were unnecessary,
The U.S. Government announced that SelfRefind, a chain of addiction treatment clinics, PremierTox LLC, a clinical laboratory that performs urine testing, and two physicians owners of SelfRefind and PremierTox (Drs. Bryan Wood and Robin Peavler) have agreed to pay $15.75 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by submitting claims to Medicare and Kentucky’s Medicaid program for drug tests that were medically unnecessary,
According to a whistleblower suit brought under the False Claims Act, Prime Healthcare, a major healthcare company, defrauded CMS by over $50 million by misrepresenting the conditions of patients at 14 of its California hospitals. The whistleblower suit was filed by Karin Bernsten, the director of performance improvement at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego.
Langhorne-based St. Mary Medical Center has agreed to pay the federal government more than $2.3 million to resolve allegations that it overpaid doctors who referred patients to the hospital.
The 15 doctors who received the overpayments referred patients covered by Medicare and Medicaid, according to the government,
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released a proposed rule this week that could allow Medicare Part D plans to curtail coverage for antidepressants.
The rule would remove antidepressants and immunosuppressants from so-called “protected” status in 2015 and would potentially ax antipsychotics from the list a year later.
For the full press release, please see:
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/January/14-civ-037.html
If you are aware of any person, corporation or entity that you think may be violating the Federal False Claims Act or a State False Claims Act, contact us today.