A recent jury verdict in an FCA lawsuit pending in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida resulted in a not-so-subtle reminder of just how high the stakes can be in such litigation. On February 15, 2017, in U.S. ex rel. Ruckh v. Genoa Healthcare, LLC, a case in which both the United States and the state of Florida declined to intervene, the jury returned a verdict finding that the operators of 53 skilled nursing facilities(SNFs) had committed FCA violations resulting in more than $115 million in damages. The FCA violations resulted from the submission of false claims to Medicare and Medicaid stemming from the inflation and upcoding of Resource Utility Group (RUG) levels for patients and false certifications that the SNFs had created timely and adequate patient care plans.
The jury’s verdict represented only actual damages. On March 1, 2017, the district court assessed a statutory penalty of $5,500 per claim to 446 false claims and trebled the jury’s damages number, the result being a staggering judgment of almost $348 million. This dwarfs even the largest of the long-term care settlements that have preceded it.Continue Reading False Claims Act Dangers on Display in Ruckh