Hospice Audit Series: The Second Guessing of Billed Hospice Physician Visits
Medical necessity cases continue to be a focal point for False Claims Act (FCA) investigations and lawsuits. With this focus comes an age-old problem for health care providers and entities defending these actions: the...more
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently allowed a False Claims Act (FCA) case based on an alleged lack of medical necessity to proceed, rejecting the lower court's decision that subjective medical opinions about the...more
As many of our readers know, the AseraCare case was closely watched over the last several years because of its significance to efforts by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to allege that submission of claims for services...more
In an action especially significant to hospice providers but also other healthcare providers regarding the determinations of medical necessity for Medicare billing purposes, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and AseraCare...more
On September 13, 2019, the Ninth Circuit heard oral argument in the False Claims Act Case of Winter v. Gardens (18-55020). The government, as an amicus in the case, carried the bulk of the argument on behalf of the plaintiff...more
In a highly anticipated opinion in the AseraCare case, issued on September 9, 2019, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s holding that “a clinical judgment of terminal illness warranting hospice...more
On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued its long-awaited and closely watched decision in United States v. AseraCare Inc.. The court ruled that a claim cannot be deemed false under the False Claims...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced a $1.99 million False Claims Act (FCA) settlement with GenomeDx Biosciences Corp. (“GenomeDx”), a laboratory headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia with operations in...more
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a significant decision, finding that a physician’s medical judgment about the medical necessity of heart procedures can be “false or fraudulent” under the federal False Claims Act...more
A LOOK BACK... A LOOK AHEAD - While the uncertainty associated with legislative efforts to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) dominated most of the headlines for the healthcare industry last year,...more
This past June, a federal district court in the District of Columbia made headlines when it declined to dismiss an action brought by a qui tam plaintiff (“Relator”) against defendant Boston Heart Diagnostics (“Boston Heart”),...more
On June 9, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied a motion to dismiss brought by a laboratory in U.S. ex rel. Groat v. Boston Heart Diagnostics Corp., 2017 WL 2533341. Part of the grounds for...more