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Sharp HealthCare — Medicare Fraud/Kickbacks (undisclosed settlement amount)

Three of our whistleblower attorneys represented a whistleblower in a qui tam action under the False Claims Act against Sharp HealthCare, a regional hospital system in San Diego.  Our client alleged that the Sharp Healthcare Center for Research, Sharp’s clinical-trial research arm, fraudulently billed government payers in violation of “secondary payer” rules that prohibit billing the government when other payers will pay for a patient’s care. Our whistleblower client also alleged that Sharp cultivated an illegal kickback scheme to entice prospective trial sponsors to host clinical trials at Sharp by regularly undervaluing Sharp’s costs involved in managing clinical trials.  By offering below-market value incentives and billing government and commercial insurers for injuries, the lawsuit alleged that Sharp sought to increase its attractiveness to trial sponsors. Sharp’s alleged purpose was to burnish the organization’s reputation and offer a lucrative stream of income for Sharp-affiliated physicians involved in clinical trials. Sharp settled the whistleblower’s case for an undisclosed amount.  Read more here.

Skyline Urology — Healthcare Fraud ($2.1M)

Constantine Cannon represented a whistleblower in a qui tam lawsuit that alleged that from 2013 through 2016 a large urology practice had fraudulently and systematically misused a billing code in order to increase reimbursements from insurers, including Medicare and private insurers in California. The code, modifier 25, is properly used when a physician performs an evaluation and management service and a separate and distinct service on the same day. Billing with modifier 25 when no distinct service occurred can improperly inflate reimbursement rates and is known as “unbundling fraud.” The Federal Government recovered $1.85M and the State of California recovered $250,000 to resolve the allegations. For his efforts in uncovering the fraud, the whistleblower received a portion of both recoveries. See The National Law Review and Becker’s ASC Review for more.