As Whistleblowers and Quality Care Advocates, Hospitalists are the Conscience of Healthcare
Posted 02/28/22
Thursday, March 3, 2022 is National Hospitalist Day, a day we recognize the contributions of the specialist care doctors and other professionals who provide quality care to sick and vulnerable patients in a hospital. As the fastest growing specialty in modern medicine, hospitalists are a critical part of the nation’s health care service delivery system.
Less noted but no less important, hospitalists also play a...
Top 5 Reasons Why Nurses Make Great Whistleblowers
Posted 02/22/22
Nurses are rightly getting a lot of attention lately for the courageous and essential role they are playing on the front-line during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, or as home health workers, nurses are finally “learning what they are worth,” even as private equity firms seek to profit from nurses’ increased wage-earning power. As reported by STAT, Congress is now...
Catch of the Week: Feds Shut The Door on an Uncommon Fraud Scheme involving New York Indigent Care Pool
Posted 02/3/22
The Southern District of New York announced a $12.9 million settlement with healthcare provider The Door, which provided services to uninsured youth for which it received reimbursement from New York State’s Indigent Care Pool. The settlement demonstrates the importance of whistleblowers, including the two that brought this case and stand to share in up to 25% of what the government collected, in helping to shut...
DOJ Announces $5.7 Billion in FCA Recoveries in Fiscal Year 2021, with Boost from Purdue Settlement Claim
Posted 02/2/22
DOJ has released its annual announcement of recoveries in civil cases involving fraud and false claims against the government, and the total recoveries are eye-popping: $5.65 billion in settlements and judgments. These recoveries make FY2021 the second largest year in False Claims Act history, and the largest since 2014.
As in prior years, healthcare fraud dominated, with more than $5 billion of the total...
Catch of the Week: Texas Hospice CEO Gets 13 Year Sentence in $60 Million Fraud Scheme
Posted 01/28/22
A federal judge in Texas sentenced Bradley Harris, former head of Novus Health Services, Inc. hospice company in Frisco, to more than thirteen years in prison and ordered him to pay $27.6 million in restitution. The sentence, announced in a DOJ press release, follows his guilty plea on charges of conspiracy and fraud on Medicare and Medicaid.
Harris is the latest to be sentenced in a fraud scheme spanning...
Top Ten Financial and Healthcare Fraud Prison Sentences of 2021
Posted 01/28/22
Individuals involved in financial and healthcare fraud schemes face not just civil liability, but also criminal penalties – including prison time. In 2021, the Department of Justice obtained substantial prison sentences in a myriad of cases involving healthcare and financial frauds, many of which involved convictions of the type of fraudulent schemes that whistleblowers report. Whistleblowers play an essential role...
Catch of the Week: 13 Conspirators Busted in $100 Million No-Fault Insurance Fraud
Posted 01/14/22
The U.S. Attorney this week announced the arrest of doctors, businesspeople, an attorney, a New York police officer, and several others in one of the largest no-fault automobile insurance fraud takedowns in history.
The investigation leading to their arrest was conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the FBI, and the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office. The...
Consistent with the trend in prior years, the bulk of the Justice Department’s fraud and false claims recoveries in 2021 stemmed from healthcare fraud matters. Most of the funds recovered arose from cases originated by whistleblowers under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act.
The majority of the recoveries on this list involve allegations of violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute, a federal law that...