The following is a summary of selected federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) reports of fraud and abuse enforcement activity across the country. The enforcement actions reported...more
Evaluation and management (E/M) services have been called “the core” of healthcare billing. E/M is a catch-all claim, allowing medical professionals to bill for diagnosing or treating nearly any illness or injury. E/M is also...more
There have been several noteworthy False Claims Act (FCA) settlements in the second quarter of 2023. Four of these settlements have come in over $20 million. This post summarizes key settlements of interest....more
Report on Medicare Compliance Volume 32, no 25 (July 2023) Hospices in four states will face heightened oversight. “CMS is placing newly enrolling hospices located in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Texas in a provisional...more
Cosmetic surgeries are on the rise. One study of cosmetic surgery data found that body procedures like tummy tucks, buttock augmentation, and liposuction increased by 63 percent from 2020 to 2021. Facelifts were up 54...more
Report on Medicare Compliance 31 no. 29 (August 15, 2022) - Sanford Health, Sanford Clinic and Sanford Medical Center in South Dakota have agreed to pay $25,842 in a settlement about telemedicine services with the HHS...more
Several days ago, Biogen Inc. announced that it had reached a settlement to resolve a whistleblower lawsuit under the False Claims Act (FCA). Relator’s claims were based on allegations that Biogen’s speaker and consultant...more
Volumes have been written about the False Claims Act as a tool to pursue fraud against the government in circumstances where the defendant has allegedly made false statements to receive money from the government. For...more
Our one-day Regional Compliance Conferences provide attendees with a forum to interact with local compliance professionals, share information about your compliance successes and challenges, and create educational...more
Compliance Today (March 2021) - A Texas spine clinic “has agreed to pay $330,898.00 to resolve liability under the False Claims Act for the alleged improper billing of electro-acupuncture device neurostimulators,” U.S....more
Report on Medicare Compliance 30, no. 2 (January 18, 2021) - Recovery audit contractors (RACs) may soon be auditing positron emission tomography (PET) for initial treatment strategy in oncologic conditions for compliance...more
In the DOJ’s first-ever criminal action against an electronic health records vendor, San Francisco-based Practice Fusion Inc. agreed to pay $145 million to resolve allegations that it received kickbacks from pharmaceutical...more
Report on Medicare Compliance 29, no. 3 (January 27, 2020) - Mission, Texas, rheumatologist Jorge Zamora-Quezada, M.D., was found guilty by a jury Jan. 15 for his part in a $325 million heath fraud scheme in which he...more
The Justice Department, in coordination with HHS-OIG and the FBI recently announced the arrest and prosecution of 35 individuals for a massive genetic testing fraud scheme involving dozens of telemedicine companies and cancer...more
• Reasonable disagreement among clinicians, by itself, does not result in a false claim. • Clinical judgment must be objectively false to constitute an FCA violation. • A clinical judgment may only be objectively false...more
The recent federal court opinion issued in United States ex rel. Integra Med Analytics, LLC v. Baylor Scott & White Health, et al, illustrates the continued importance of examining the plausibility of allegations made in qui...more
Most health care providers recognize that submitting a knowingly false claim to a federally funded health care program violates the False Claims Act (FCA). However, it is less well known that indirectly "causing" someone else...more
On September 9, 2019, the Eleventh Circuit issued a highly anticipated opinion addressing the critical question of when Medicare claims for reimbursement (in this case, claims for hospice care) can be considered “false” under...more
On September 9, in a setback for AseraCare but an overall win for hospice providers, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a Northern District of Alabama decision to grant a new trial in a False Claims Act (FCA) case against...more
In a long-awaited decision, the Eleventh Circuit concurred with the lower court’s standard for determining falsity under the False Claims Act (FCA) — reasonable disagreement between medical experts alone is not enough to...more
More than two years after the Northern District of Alabama granted summary judgment in a False Claims Act (FCA) case in favor of AseraCare Inc., holding that “contradiction based on clinical judgment or opinion alone cannot...more
In the wave of physician practice management transactions, urology is poised to be one of the next hot sectors. In addition to the issues to consider in connection with any physician practice transaction, below we discuss...more
In a three-sentence order issued on October 29th, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to grant a Request for Rehearing in the closely watched Polukoff case. One of the questions raised in the Request was whether, by...more
In recent years, healthcare providers have increasingly faced civil and criminal enforcement actions premised on the allegation that services billed to government healthcare programs were not medically necessary. As a result,...more
Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced its largest ever national health care fraud takedown, resulting in charges against 601 diverse defendants including...more