Whistleblower News From The Inside -- August 6, 2015
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
Decision in 60-day repayment rule case puts providers on high alert — Healthcare providers that receive an overpayment from the government must report and return the overpayment within 60 days of the date they “identify” the overpayment. Those who don’t may violate the False Claims Act. In the first court decision interpreting this rule, a federal judge in New York rejected the argument that a claim is “identified” when specific overpayments are conclusively pinpointed, concluding instead that the 60-day clock begins running when a provider is on notice of potential overpayments—even where the exact claims or amounts are not yet known. Modern Healthcare and Court Order
Pharma giant rehires whistleblower linked to China bribery scandal — GlaxoSmithKline rehired a former executive whom the company once suspected of being the whistleblower in a scandal at its Chinese operations. The decision came after a devastating period in China for the pharmaceutical giant, in which five senior executives were convicted and the company was fined nearly $500 million for bribing doctors, hospitals, and others to bolster sales. NYT and Fierce Pharma
Final defendant in Madoff fraud case jailed — Irwin Lipkin, the final defendant in the $68 billion Madoff fraud case, has been jailed after pleading guilty to falsifying documents to help hide the fraud from US regulators. His sentence marks the end of a six-year prosecution saga, in which 15 people have been convicted for their parts in the Ponzi scheme Madoff orchestrated that defrauded investors out of billions of dollars. BBC and Bloomberg
Feds: States still don’t ax troubled Medicaid providers – A new report reveals states’ ongoing problems with terminating contracts of Medicaid providers who have been terminated with cause in another state. The Affordable Care Act requires states to sever relationships with providers found to be bad actors in other states. The new report shows that as many as 12% of providers terminated in one state in 2011 were still participating in other states’ Medicaid programs as late as 2014. HHS-OIG