by Nolan and Auerbach on April 30, 2007
The Department of Justice may end up joining a False Claims Act case to collect the $30 Million recovery won by the relator but then subsequently overturned by Judge Phillip Figa citing that fact that if a relator is dismissed from a case, the court still has subject matter jurisdiction if it intervenes. After the verdict was returned by the jury in the Kerr-McGee case finding that the company cheated the federal government, the judge ruled that the whistleblower did not qualify to bring the case under the False Claims Act because the wrongdoing had already been disclosed to the government. Up until that point, the Department of Justice did not intervene in the case.
On April 11, 2007, however, the Department of Justice indicated that they are interested in the $30 million the jury said was defrauded by Kerr-McGee and has requested the judge to grant them time to decide whether to intervene.
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by Nolan and Auerbach on April 30, 2007
On April 20, 2007, the Loma Linda Behavioral Medicine Center paid the United States government in excess of $2 million to settle allegations of overbilling from 1992-1996. The settlementis the result of a lawsuit filed by a whistleblower under the False Claims Act. The lawsuit was originally filed in 1998 by a former employee of Healthcare Financial Advisors (HFA), a consulting firm that assists hospitals in preparing cost reports that are submitted to insurers. The lawsuit alleged that Healthcare Financial Advisors prepared for clients two costs reports; one which was inflated and sent to Medicare and another one designed for internal use only, that accurately reflected the amount of reimbursement the hospital should have received from Medicare. It should be noted that seven defendants thus far have settled the HFA whistleblower lawsuit, paying approximately $55 million to the government. (Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida more than $14 million; St. Elizabeth Regional Medical Center in Lincoln, Nebraska more than $4 million, Lovelace Health System, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cigna Corp. based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, paid $24.5 million in 2002; St. Joseph’s Hospital in Houston, Texas, paid the government $1.5 million in 2002; Eisenhower Medical Center, located in Rancho Mirage, Calif., paid $8 million in 2005 and HealthSouth Bakersfield Rehabilitation Hospital in Bakersfield, Calif., paid $740,000 in 2005).
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