From the founding of the Republic, Americans have joked about the poor handwriting of physicians. Well, all the Americans except the ones who got the wrong medicine because pharmacists misread handwritten prescriptions....more
Jeffrey Jacobs alleges that Idaho’s Pocatello Hospital violated the False Claims Act because of physician recruitment contracts that were overly generous to his practice group. Jeff should know because he was recruited under...more
10/7/2015
/ Anti-Kickback Statute ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Hospitals ,
Medicaid ,
Medicare ,
Physicians ,
Recruitment Incentives ,
Recruitment Policies ,
Reimbursements ,
Stark Law ,
Whistleblowers
RHP hired Schindler to practice neurosurgery. Two years later, he developed various back-related physical issues that interfered with his ability to perform surgery. RHP took steps to accommodate him so that he could...more
The Stark Law generally prohibits physicians from referring Medicare and Medicaid patients to facilities in which they have an ownership interest. There used to be a “whole hospital exception” excluding entire hospitals (as...more
Okay, there’s not really a Most-Illegal-Physician-Compensation Prize. But if there were, Florida’s North Broward Hospital District would have won in a walk. That’s why the district has agreed to pay the government $69.5...more
Before September 11 the Third Circuit Court of Appeals had been out of step with its sister federal circuits when it came to the right of hospitals, physicians and other health providers to sue health insurers that failed to...more
Who knew? When you park for free at your doctor’s office, you may be a pawn in a scheme to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute, the Stark Law, and the False Claims Act. It’s enough to make you sick....more
Alisia and David blew the whistle on their former employer, Nurses’ Registry & Home Health, for sending gift baskets and ticket events to doctors who referred patients to the home health operation. Their qui tam suit alleged...more
7/22/2015
/ Anti-Kickback Statute ,
Client Referrals ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Gifts ,
Home Health Care ,
Nurses ,
Physician Compensation Arrangements ,
Physicians ,
Qui Tam ,
Stark Law ,
Summary Judgment ,
Whistleblowers
Generally, when a doctor is convicted for fraud, the misdeeds are limited to a single category of fraud. Maybe the doctor charged for procedures that weren’t performed; maybe there were kickbacks for referrals; or maybe...more
We don’t normally think of American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals as friends. After all, the AHA represents nonprofits, while the FAH represents for-profits. ...more
As of March 3, Solvay Pharmaceuticals is ready to second P.T. Barnum’s famous dictum that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. That’s the day a federal court in Texas dismissed a qui tam action against Solvay....more
You read that correctly: the hospital fired the physician who did the reviewing in a medical staff peer review proceeding. Hospital executives present at the proceeding felt the reviewing physician was too harsh in...more
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might have called it “The Case of the Doctors Who Work More than 24 Hours a Day.” Unfortunately for the physician group in question, Sir Arthur wasn’t the author; the federal court for the Northern...more
Okay, it wasn’t really Rip Van Winkle. Rip slept for only twenty years. It was Dr. Legrand Belnap who sued a Salt Lake City hospital and its medical executive committee members. ...more
On January 14 the Texas Supreme Court will hear argument in an appeal that asks the question, When is a pharmacist not a pharmacist? The appeal is from a Texas Court of Appeals decision that answered the question this way: ...more
Last month, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a private letter ruling providing a tax benefit to hospitals that own physician practices. The ruling should be of particular interest to hospitals with physician...more
Today’s riddle: A physician sues defendants for defamation. The defendants move to compel the arbitration clause of a contract the physician used to have with a nonparty. The defendants win the argument. What’s the...more
On the last day of 2014 the Minnesota Supreme Court gave a hospital medical staff a double victory, ruling that (1) medical staff bylaws constitute a contract between the hospital and medical staff members and (2) the medical...more
On Monday the United States Supreme Court declined to hear Danny Smart’s appeal of the Fifth Circuit’s rejection of his attempt to share in the proceeds of a $5 million settlement of a False Claims Act suit brought by another...more
Maybe it was a coincidence, but CMS waited until Halloween to announce its final 2015 payment policies for physicians and hospital outpatient departments. While the announced changes are not really scary, one evoked sharp...more
Last Friday Eastern Maine Medical Center sued Health & Human Services over the way CMS counted the number of residents in its graduate medical education program. According to the complaint, CMS refuses to count some of the...more
Last week in a medical malpractice case in Alabama, a federal court denied the plaintiff’s motion to compel production by a hospital of the defendant doctor’s personnel file. The plaintiff believed that the file could show...more
Apparently Americans feel that way about Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service physician compensation schedule. Everybody complains about it, but nobody likes any proposed changes. That’s clear from the reaction to the...more
Dr. Robinson is an obstetrician at St. Francis Hospital. A diabetic, he underwent surgery for a broken foot and can’t always remain standing throughout deliveries. So he uses a rolling stool and practices from a seated...more
Physician licensing is, and always has been, a matter for the states. But ease of travel from one state to another has long placed a strain on that approach, as physicians and patients alike move easily from one state to...more