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:
- 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.
- The high compensation generated practice losses for Trinity absent taking into account the physicians’ downstream referrals to the health system.
- As a result of the physicians’ compensation methodology, they performed unnecessary surgeries to inflate their compensation.
- 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