Kathryn Isted In Harbor Healthcare System, L.P. v. United States, 5 F.4th 593 (5th Cir. 2021), the court of appeals ruled that the district court abused its discretion in refusing to.
To embed, copy and paste the code into your website or blog:
False Claims Act (“FCA”) complaints are subject to the heightened pleading requirements of Rule 9(b),
Universal Health Servs., Inc. v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1989, 2004, 195 L. Ed. 2d 348 (2016). But circuits are split on whether that requirement should be relaxed for relators, or whistleblowers, who lack direct access to the alleged fraud.
The Fourth, Eighth, and Eleventh circuits seemingly apply Rule 9(b) more rigidly, while the First, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth and Tenth circuits have a more flexible approach. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court was expected to resolve this split, but before the Court issued its decision, the parties settled, leaving the circuit split in place. In this article, we examine recent decisions that illustrate a possible shift in the Seventh Circuit’s pleading standard.
Health
your username
5 hours ago Magistrate Judge Andrew Rodovich of the Northern District of Indiana on Wednesday denied a motion to dismiss a case against a physician and the Centers for Pain Control Inc. (CPC), finding that the relator’s claims hold up to the required pleading standard.
Physician Dion Snider filed a qui tam action in May 2018 alleging that the defendants were operating a fraudulent billing and kickback scheme, in violation of the FCA, the Indiana False Claims and Whistleblower Protection Act, and the federal anti-kickback statute. Snider claimed that CPC promised and gave out free massage therapy sessions to Medicare and Medicaid patients who purchased trigger point therapy and failed to bill the federal health programs for the massage therapy sessions.