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Brian Roark is co-chair of the Bass, Berry & Sims Healthcare Fraud Task Force and concentrates his practice on representing healthcare clients in responding to governmental investigations and defending False Claims Act lawsuits. He has successfully litigated and resolved numerous healthcare fraud matters involving hospitals and health systems, ambulatory surgery centers, hospices, home health companies, drug and alcohol abuse treatment centers, Medicare Advantage companies, and other healthcare providers.

Please join us on Thursday, July 13 at 12pm CT as we examine how False Claims Act cases ended up before the Supreme Court, the Court’s analysis of these cases, and the lasting impact that these opinions will have for those dealing with False Claims Act-related issues. Continue Reading Register Now: The Supreme Court and the False Claims Act Webinar

Bass Berry & Sims recently secured dismissals on behalf of healthcare providers in three separate False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam lawsuits in a matter of a week’s time. Continue Reading Bass, Berry & Sims Notches Wins for Clients in Trio of False Claims Act Qui Tam Lawsuits

On March 28, the Sixth Circuit issued an important decision on the meanings of “remuneration” and “causation” under the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS), holding that remuneration “covers just payments and other transfers of value” and not “any act that may be valuable to another,” and that to establish False Claims Act (FCA) liability based on AKS violations, a relator or the government must prove a causal link between the alleged kickback scheme and the alleged false claim. Continue Reading Sixth Circuit Reins In Anti-Kickback Statute

I recently discussed the trends related to False Claims Act (FCA) settlements in the home health sector, as revealed in the Healthcare Fraud & Abuse Settlements Database which we launched earlier this year. The database was part of the comprehensive Healthcare Fraud & Abuse Resource Center that provides an overview of FCA enforcement settlements, court decisions, updates involving the Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute, and other developments affecting the healthcare industry.

“We wanted to create a database of False Claims Act settlements to allow providers to have easy access to information, to see the cases that the government or regulators have resolved in the health care fraud space,” I told Home Health Care News. “This is the first publicly available database of this type.”

According to the information in the database, home health providers have paid at least $422.6 million since 2012 to settle FCA allegations. This represents 51 different cases over the time period from 2012-2020.Continue Reading False Claims Act Cases in Home Health Sector

Bass, Berry & Sims is pleased to announce the release of the newest edition of its Healthcare Fraud & Abuse Annual Review examining important healthcare fraud developments in 2020. Compiled by the firm’s Healthcare Fraud Task Force, the Review provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the past year’s court decisions involving the False

As 2020 draws to a close, we take a look back at a number of the most significant False Claims Act (FCA) cases of the prior 12 months.  Although no blockbuster cases emerged, such as the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Escobar, there were a number of noteworthy cases that will have lasting impact on future FCA litigation.  We discuss those cases briefly below.  We expect to cover these cases and much more in our Healthcare Fraud and Abuse Review, which we will release in early 2021.

Materiality

U.S. ex rel. Janssen v. Lawrence Memorial Hospital, 949 F.3d 533 (10th Cir. 2020)

Background.  In 2016, the Supreme Court held in Escobar that whether a defendant can be held liable under the FCA for violating a statute, rule, regulation, or contract provision turns, in part, on the elements of materiality and scienter, which the Court said are “rigorous” and “demanding.”  Post-Escobar, courts have grappled with specific applications of these standards, with some courts appearing to apply them less “rigorously” than others.

Allegations.  In U.S. ex rel. Janssen v. Lawrence Memorial Hospital, the relator primarily alleged that the defendant hospital falsified patient arrival times associated with certain CMS pay-for-reporting and pay-for-performance programs.  The relator introduced proof that the hospital had knowingly falsified arrival times in patient records by recording actual arrival times on patient triage sheets but then entering later times in the medical record or delaying patient registration until after the administration of some tests.Continue Reading Key False Claims Act Cases in 2020

On June 25, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the dismissal with prejudice of a qui tam False Claims Act (FCA) suit alleging certain physician compensation arrangements at Trinity Health violated the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) and Stark Law.

The relator, a former surgeon at one of Trinity’s hospitals, alleged the following:

  1. Trinity paid five of its highest-earning physicians above fair market value by compensating them in excess of 90th percentile compensation for their specialties at levels not justified by their personal productivity.
  2. The high compensation generated practice losses for Trinity absent taking into account the physicians’ downstream referrals to the health system.
  3. As a result of the physicians’ compensation methodology, they performed unnecessary surgeries to inflate their compensation.
  4. Trinity opted not to renew the relator’s contract because he complained about these allegedly-unnecessary surgeries.

Continue Reading Eighth Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Kickback Case

On February 25, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee dismissed a relator’s qui tam False Claims Act (FCA) suit alleging that the defendants had continued the “exact scheme” previously alleged in U.S. ex rel. Deming v. Jackson-Madison Cty. Gen. Hosp., et al. involving allegations of medically unnecessary cardiac testing and procedures.

The defendants in U.S. ex rel. Maur v. Cmty. Health Sys., Inc., et al., represented by Bass, Berry & Sims and others, moved to dismiss the relator’s action on two grounds.  First, the defendants argued that the FCA’s public disclosure bar prohibited the relator’s action as the lawsuit raised substantially the same allegations as those publicly disclosed in the Deming action and subsequent press releases related to that lawsuit.  Second, the defendants maintained that the relator had failed to plead any FCA claims with the requisite particularity under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b).  The district court granted the defendants’ motions and dismissed the relator’s action on both grounds.Continue Reading Public Disclosure Bar and Pleading Deficiencies Doom Tennessee FCA Case