Brockton Urology Clinic LLC in North Easton, Massachusetts recently agreed to pay $100,000 to settle claims it submitted false claims to Medicare in violation of federal law.
The case is yet another example of healthcare fraud cases that cost the United States billions of dollars every single year.
Case background
According to the settlement agreement, the case goes back to 2011, when Brockton Urology entered into an agreement with a hospital in Massachusetts that required the company to administer a “Prostate Cancer Center of Excellence” at the hospital.
Brockton Urology admitted in the case that the hospital never created this center and that the company never provided a physician to serve as the director of the hospital’s Prostate Center Program. Despite this, the hospital continued to pay Brockton Urology in accordance with the agreement all the way through December 2017, and the company continued to refer patients to the hospital.
The Department of Justice’s position in the case was that this arrangement constituted an unlawful financial relationship between eh company and the hospital that was a violation of the False Claims Act. Through the arrangement, Brockton Urology submitted false claims to Medicare, defrauding the federal government.
Law enforcement officials who investigated the case and took part in the enforcement action said this settlement shows a dedication on the part of the government to protect taxpayers’ finances and that illegal financial arrangements that enrich healthcare organizations or private companies will not be tolerated. The federal investigators partnered with the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office to identify and prosecute the case.
In many cases, healthcare fraud is only revealed due to the information provided by whistleblowers embedded within the organization. For more information about how you can take action to hold organizations liable for fraudulent activity, contact an experienced whistleblower lawyer at Kardell Law Group.
