Physician ownership of medical device manufacturers can be tricky stuff where the Anti-Kickback Statute is concerned, but the Office of Inspector General recently declared it had no problem with one such arrangement due to the physician’s ratio of ownership of the company.
Companies in the life sciences must tread carefully when it comes to the Anti-Kickback Statute, but a recent advisory opinion by the Office of Inspector General lends little clarity on the point.
The U.S. Department of Justice said the CEO of Spinefrontier Inc., Kingsley Chin, entered a guilty plea in connection with allegations that he made false statements about payments made to surgeons for consulting work the physicians did not perform.
Denver-based Davita Inc. agreed to pay more than $34 million to settle allegations that the company violated the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) by not collecting management fees from physicians to induce referrals to the company’s dialysis clinics.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in May 2023 that it had obtained a judgment of more than $487 million against the parent company of Precision Lens for alleged violations of the False Claims Act (FCA), but the amount of that decision has been overturned. In a Feb. 8 decision, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota decreed that the judgment be reduced to less than $217 million, an outcome which suggests that some of the more excessive fines levied against health care companies will be viewed with more skepticism upon appeal.
Fraud on federal health programs often revolves around illicit billings for in vitro diagnostics, but the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has added mobile cardiac positron emission tomography (PET) to the list of technologies that have been used to violate the law.
One of the more significant enforcement actions to date in 2024 is the $13 million hit taken by the owner of a clinical lab in New Jersey for allegations of payment of kickbacks for unnecessary testing, suggesting that this new year will be a robust one for federal fraud enforcement in the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that a judgment of more than $487 million has been lodged against Cameron-Ehlen Group Inc., of Bloomington, Minn., for alleged violations of the False Claims Act (FCA) in connection with the company’s distribution of products used in cataract surgeries. That final amount is more than 10 times the amount alleged to have been billed illicitly to federal health programs, a clear signal that inducement of this sort will be met with severe penalties.
Depuy Synthes Inc., of Raynham, Mass., has agreed to pay $9.75 million to settle allegations that several members of its sales team had induced an orthopedic surgeon to use the company’s products in orthopedic procedures by offering free implants and surgical instruments. The fine comes under the guise of a False Claims Act violation but might have been substantially larger but for the fact that Depuy reported the issue to federal authorities.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that it has arrived at a settlement of $45 million with Boca Raton, Fla.-based Modernizing Medicine Inc., an electronic health record (EHR) vendor that was accused of inducing referrals to a clinical lab for pathology services. The department stated that this settlement was the fourth such action against EHR vendors and is part of a concerted DOJ effort to “root out fraud” in the field, a signal that more enforcement against these companies is in the works.
