Articles Tagged with health care fraud whistleblowers’ attorney

It’s something you learn in preschool, but sometimes it seems like a lesson modern medicine has forgotten – Everybody is unique (and that’s a good thing!).  Medicine should be tailored to individual patient’s needs; after all, that’s why we go to the doctor individually rather than showing up with thirty others and being handed the same treatment as everyone else.  Sometimes, however, companies forget this and often profit seems to be the motivating factor.  Using overly generalized profiles to justify unnecessary, costly tests and/or treatments can be a form of health care fraud.  The law empowers both patients and conscientious professionals to fight these misdeeds, wrongs that can be both costly and dangerous.  As a whistleblowers’ law firm specializing in health care fraud, The Brod Law Firm can help.  Together, we can bring an end to unnecessary billing based on general profiles and ensure medicine focuses on the individual.

Lab Company Settles Claims it Billed for Unnecessary, Generalized Services

On October 19, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) issued a press release announcing the settlement of multiple False Claims Act lawsuits against Millennium Health, a company headquartered in California.  Millennium agreed to pay $256 million to resolve claims they billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs for services that were not medically necessary and allegations they provided free items to medical practitioners in exchange for their use of company services.  While the settlement resolves the legal claims in several whistleblower suits, Millennium did not admit any wrongdoing.

Few things are more important that health.  We all worry about it, especially when we think about our senior years.  In addition to worrying about our physical and mental well-being, many of us are plagued by questions like “Will I be able to afford the health care that I need?”  Medicare and Medicaid exist to ease these concerns, but they are struggling.  As an experienced health care fraud law firm, we know that fraud is a big part of the problem.  Nursing home fraud and other forms of Medicare/Medicaid fraud deplete already limited resources and impede the quality of care as (so-called) professionals place profit over people’s health.  Scammers target lucrative arenas so it is no surprise that our firm is seeing repeated cases of Medicaid and Medicare fraud involving nursing home pharmacy providers.

Tentative Settlement in Case Alleging Pharmacy Accepted Kickbacks in Exchange for Promoting Drug

According to Modern Healthcare, Omnicare, the country’s largest provider of pharmacy services for long-term care facilities, reached a tentative agreement with the federal government to settle accusations it accepted millions of pharmacydollars in illegal kickbacks from Abbott Laboratories.  According to the government, Abbott paid kickbacks in exchange for Omnicare promoting the drug Depakote as treatment for behavioral disturbances in dementia patients.  The FDA has not approved Depakote for that purpose.  Nonetheless, Omnicare purportedly promoted the off-label use and had its pharmacists review patient charts and recommend the drug to doctors.  In return, Abbott allegedly paid kickbacks in a range of different disguises from “educational funding” and grants to tickets to sporting events and money used to fund corporate meetings.

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