Podcast — Drug Pricing: How the Demise of Chevron Deference and Other Litigation May Impact the Pharmaceutical Industry
Podcast — Drug Pricing: How Are Payers Responding to the IRA?
Hospice Insights Podcast - A Rise in Medicare Deactivations: Tips for Avoiding This Financial Pain
Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Video Podcast | Episode 187: South Carolina Hospitals and Healthcare Industry Trends with Thornton Kirby, SCHA President
A Fond Farewell: Musings on the End of the Medicare Advantage Hospice Carve-In Demonstration
Video: Braidwood v. Becerra – Challenging the Affordable Care Act’s Preventive Services Coverage Provision – Thought Leaders in Health Law
Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Video Podcast | Episode 173: Improving rural health care with Dr. Kevin Bennett, the Director of the Research Center for Transforming Health and the
Medical Device Legal News with Sam Bernstein: Episode 19
Counsel That Cares - The Private Payer's Perspective on Value-Based Care
Opting Out of Medicare: When and How to Do It
Medical Device Legal News with Sam Bernstein: Episode 11
Show Me the Money: New Study Confirms Hospice Saves Money for Medicare
An Unwanted Spotlight: DOJ Announces Hospice Fraud Is Top Priority
The Chartwell Chronicles: Medicare & Medicaid
Navigating EMTALA Rules
Heed Caution: Takeaways From the OIG's Advance Care Planning Report
Podcast: The End of the Public Health Emergency – What's to Come? – Diagnosing Health Care
Patient Steering and Charting
Telehealth Risk Report: What the Government Found
Do You Have a Backup? Building Redundancies Into Your Written Certification Process
A federal judge in Florida issued a ruling this week holding that the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA) are unconstitutional. In the lawsuit, a relator named Clarissa Zafirov accused the defendants of violating...more
In a prior blog, PilieroMazza discussed the Supreme Court’s decision in United States ex rel. Polansky v. Executive Health Resources, Inc. In that case, in his dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas referred to the qui...more
In a new decision that could have a significant impact on the persistent efforts of relators to reach otherwise lawful conduct and characterize it as a violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS), the US Court of Appeals for...more
In this post, we summarize noteworthy False Claims Act (FCA) decisions so far from 2023. Each of the three circuit court opinions discussed here ruled in favor of the defendants on different aspects of the FCA: the Sixth...more
On March 31, 2023, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania dealt a blow to a trio of nursing home providers by denying their motion to dismiss a False Claims Act (FCA) claim brought by the...more
Takeaway: Over ten years, the Maryland False Health Claims Act has returned $160M to the State. This Digest summarizes each of the 173 matters reported under the Act from 2011 through 2021....more
The federal False Claims Act results in a host of interesting relator claims. This one caught my eye. In United States of America v. Intermountain Healthcare, Inc., Case No. 2:20-cv-00372-TC-CMR (U.S. Dist. Ct. D. Utah...more
A defendant who violates the FCA can be liable for treble damages plus a civil penalty of $5,500 to $11,000 (adjusted for inflation) for each false claim. Meanwhile, FCA lawsuits often involve tens of thousands of alleged...more
In U.S. ex rel. Freedman v. Bayada Home Health Care, Inc., No. 3:19-cv-18753-FLW-ZNQ, 2021 WL 1904735 (D.N.J. May 12, 2021), a New Jersey District Court found that the relator failed to plead a cognizable theory of liability...more
Last week, the Third Circuit joined several other appellate courts in finding that medical opinions related to medical necessity of hospice services can be subject to scrutiny and found to be “false” for purposes of proving a...more
On March 4, 2020, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held in United States ex rel. Druding v. Care Alternatives, No. 18-3298, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 6795 (3d Cir. Mar. 4, 2020) that a difference of opinion between a medical...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled last week that whistleblower relators need not show “objective falsity” to prove their claims, and that a dispute among physician experts about a clinical...more
Key Points: - False Claims Act plaintiff cannot use discovery to satisfy Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b). - Payment of fair market value is a dispositive defense in FCA actions alleging a violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute. ...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently released its report detailing the settlements and judgments obtained in 2019 from civil cases involving fraud and abuse claims. As in years past, the substantial majority of these...more
Through a January 9, 2020, press release, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) reported more than $3 billion in total recoveries from settlements and judgments from fraud-related civil matters brought under the False Claims Act...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
In early August, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas granted a hospital system’s motion to dismiss a False Claims Act case that illustrates the increasing intersections in FCA litigation between data...more
DOJ News - Inpatient Rehabilitation Company Agrees to Pay $48 Million to Resolve FCA Allegations - DOJ announced that Encompass Health Corporation (f/k/a HealthSouth Corporation), the nation’s largest operator of...more
WHAT’S INSIDE - Who Decides How Bankruptcy Laws Are Applied? PROMESA: An Experiment Doomed to Fail - The Role of Alter Ego in Restructuring - SPECIAL FRAUD SECTION - Don’t Depend on a Handshake - Health...more
On February 11, 2019, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a group of relators’ qui tam suit against Crawford County Memorial Hospital for failure to meet the pleading standards required by Federal Rule of Civil...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced a $1.99 million False Claims Act (FCA) settlement with GenomeDx Biosciences Corp. (“GenomeDx”), a laboratory headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia with operations in...more
In 2018, the False Claims Act (“FCA”) continued to be one of the federal government’s (“Government”) preferred civil fraud enforcement tools across a variety of industries. The healthcare industry, however, remained the...more
On November 20, 2018, Brookdale Senior Living Communities, Inc. filed a petition for writ of certiorari, asking the Supreme Court to resolve circuit splits that have arisen post-Escobar regarding both the materiality and the...more
In this issue, we provide an overview of 62 recently unsealed qui tam cases and take an in-depth look at four of those cases. Two of the featured cases concern alleged schemes to provide unnecessary therapy to residents of...more