Category: Healthcare
The Swiss-based pharmaceutical giant Novartis will pay Texas $19.9 million to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act. The whistleblower in this case, Donald Galmines, is a former Novartis marketing representative. Galmines’s suit alleges that the pharmaceutical manufacturer falsely marketed its drug, Elidel, which has been approved by the FDA for use on patients ages two and up who suffer from eczema and who were not seeing results from the “first-line” treatment options.
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc., a Connecticut based pharmaceutical manufacturer, has reached an agreement with the US Government to pay $95 million to resolve allegations relating to the unlawful marketing of three different drugs.
Aggrenox, a stroke-prevention drug, Combivent, a COPD drug and Micardis, a hypertension drug, were all involved in the settlement which alleged that Boehringer improperly marketed these drugs thus causing false claims to be submitted to the government’s health care programs.
A sponsor of a Medicare prescription-drug plan has agreed to pay the U.S. government $5.25 million to settle claims that it gave the government false information about drug pricing to lure consumers into signing up for its plan.
The settlement, announced this week in New York, is among the first involving claims brought under the False Claims Act for alleged fraud in the Medicare Part D program.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced that it has reached a settlement with Georgia Cancer Specialists I, PC, which agreed to pay $4.1 million to settle claims that it violated the False Claims Act by billing Medicare for evaluation and management services that were not permitted by Medicare rules.
According to federal officials, Pinnacle Medical Solutions, a Mississippi medical equipment company, has agreed to pay nearly $1.8 million to settle claims in a 2009 whistleblower lawsuit that the company bilked government insurance groups out of money for delivery of diabetic supplies to patients. The suit was filed by two former employees who can receive between 15% and 25% of the money recovered.
In the largest settlement in Medi-Cal history, SCAN, a provider of health care and support services in Southern California for the elderly and disabled, will pay $323.67 million to settle allegations that they failed to provide contractually required financials to the Department of Healthcare Services (“DHCS”). By failing to turn over the financials,
HCA, one of the largest for-profit hospital chains nationwide, has agreed to pay the United States and the state of Tennessee $16.5 million to settle allegations arising from its Parkridge Medical Center facility in Chattanooga. A financial arrangement between Parkridge Medical Center and physician group Diagnostic Associates of Chattanooga triggered the allegations that Parkridge violated the False Claims Act and the Stark Statute.
A Los Angeles area physician assistant, David James Garrison, has been sentenced to 72 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for stealing the identity of physicians to prescribe medically unnecessary prescriptions for durable medical equipment (“DME”) and diagnostic tests. He has also been ordered to pay $24,935 in restitution.
Orthofix’s proposed $7.8 million settlement in a Medicare kickback investigation has been rejected by U.S. District Judge William G. Young. Orthofix had proposed pleading guilty to one count of obstructing a government audit and paying a $7.8 million fine. In rejecting the settlement, Judge Young stated that he had unease in treating a corporate criminal case as a civil case and that the settlement unduly restricted his sentencing power.
The Department of Justice announced on September 6, 2012, that the government has intervened in a whistleblower lawsuit against Hospice of the Comforter Inc. (“HOTCI”) alleging false Medicare. HOTCI provides hospice services to patients residing in the vicinity of Orlando, Fla.
The lawsuit, filed by HOTCI’s former vice-president of finance,
