During the fiscal year 2010, the US government was able to recover more than $4 Billion stolen from federal health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Due to the fraud-fighting efforts of the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) and Medicare Fraud Strike, this money was returned to the Medicare Health Insurance Trust Fund,
Seven hospitals in Florida, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina and Alabama have agreed to pay the United States a total of more than $6.3 million to settle allegations under the False Claims Act. Between 2000 and 2008 these hospitals performed kyphoplasty, a minimally invasive treatment for certain spinal fractures that is often performed on an outpatient basis.
Philadelphia based Norian Corp, its corporate parent, Synthes, Inc., and four Norian executives have pleaded guilty in connection with conducting unauthorized tests of its bone cement product in the spine of more than 200 patients, an “off-label” use for which it had trained many surgeons. The trial were made on over 200 spinal surgery patients,
On November 10, 2010, U.S. District Court Judge Maurice B. Cohill, Jr., of the Western District of Pennsylvania denied the defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment, thereby permitting the qui tam action by the doctors and U.S. Government to go forward. Doctors Dilbagh Singh, Paul Kirsch, Rao Nadella, and Martin Jacobs filed a qui tam action pursuant to the False Claims Act against Bradford Regional Medical Center (“BRMC”),
On October 20, 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (“HHS”) Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) announced guidelines enabling the barring of executives of pharmaceutical companies from contracting with U.S. Government health programs when they know, or if the OIG concludes they should have known, about Medicare fraud at their company.
St. Joseph Medical Center has agreed to pay the United States $22 million to settle allegations under the False Claims Act that it paid unlawful remuneration under the Anti-Kickback Act and violated the Stark Law when it entered into a series of professional services contracts with MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates.
For more information see: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/November/10-civ-1271.html
On October 27, 2010, GlaxoSmithKline (“GSK”), the world’s fourth-largest pharmaceutical company by revenue, announced that it had finalized a settlement with the U.S. Government to resolve both civil False Claims Act allegations and criminal allegations related to GSK’s faulty manufacturing of prescription medications at the company’s former plant in Cidra,
Four Miami-Dade healthcare operators have been charged with scheming to defraud Medicare out of a $200 million by fraudulently billing for mental health services. A whistleblower lawsuit was filed against American Therapeutic, the nation’s largest chain of community mental health centers licensed by Medicare. American Therapeutic and its senior employees were charged with scheming to bill Medicare for unnecessary group therapy sessions or sessions that never occurred.
Johnson & Johnson was required to pay $257.7 million to the state of Louisiana for wrongfully marketing the antipsychotic drug Risperdal. The case centered on claims that J&J and Ortho-McNeil Janssen sent correspondence letters in 2003 to 700,000 doctors which labeled Risperdal as safer then its competitors and minimized its links to diabetes.
With the recent $422.5 million settlement by Novartis in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, now seems to be a good time to step back and look more broadly at the magnitude of recent FCA settlements. Over the past 22 months alone, a total of 11 pharmaceutical companies have paid over $6 billion to the government.
If you are aware of any person, corporation or entity that you think may be violating the False Claims Act, securities, commodities, tax, anti-money laundering, or sanctions laws, contact us today.