Compliance & Legal
The Justice Department has announced a multi-million dollar settlement with Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, California, that resolves allegations it violated Medicare's prohibition on financial relationships between hospitals and referring physicians. The hospital has agreed to pay $3,278,464.
The nation's largest nursing home rehabilitation therapy provider RehabCare, which is now part of Kindred Healthcare of Louisville, Kentucky, has settled with the government for $125 million over allegations they falsely inflated therapy reimbursement claims to Medicare. Four other skilled nursing home rehab facilities also settled in connection with those claims, bringing the total to a little more than $133 million, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced Tuesday.
Kenneth Johnson, 49, is one of three found guilty following a 2014 trial and an investigation authorities dubbed "Operation Psyched Out".
Fifty-five hospitals have filed a lawsuit against the Secretary of Health and Human Services over Medicare's 0.2 percent cut in payment for inpatient stays that went into effect January 1 under the two-midnight rule, according to lawyers at Foley & Lardner in Washington, D.C., who filed the lawsuit on Friday.
Healthcare Fraud charges have been filed against Dr. John Terry, 65, of Wellsboro, in connection with false prescriptions for Oxycodone authorities say he wrote, said the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The creators of the Lumosity "brain training" program will pay the Federal Trade Commission $2 million to settle charges they deceived consumers with unfounded claims that their product sharpened cognitive performance and could protect against decline, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
The former owner and operator of three different health clinics in Los Angeles was sentenced Monday to six and a half years in prison for his role in a scheme that produced more than $4.5 million in fraudulent Medicare claims, the U.S. Attorney's office and FBI announced.
Sentencing continues for family members involved in a Medicare Part D fraud scheme that bilked the system for more than $20 million and saw its perpetrators using the funds to buy luxury cars and fund other businesses, said the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Florida.
Aria Health Systems, a major healthcare provider in Northeast Philadelphia and lower Bucks County, has settled two False Claims Act matters stemming from allegations that a cardiologist in their system performed unnecessary invasive procedures on patients and outpatients at its Torresdale facility. The second matter involves alleged violations of the False Claims Act related to overcompensation of physicians and overpayment for a trademark name while the provider was in the process of acquiring an orthopedic group in December 2012, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced in a December 23 statement.
The clinical director of a Massachusetts home nursing agency, along with the agency's co-conspiring owner and doctor who served as the agency's medical director, have been sentenced in U.S. District Court in Boston for healthcare fraud and other charges in a multi-million dollar Medicare fraud scheme, the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office announced in a Dec. 22 statement.