With over 25 years of experience, the Hospital Fraud Lawyers at Nolan, Auerbach & White handle hospital fraud cases in the United States. If you’ve become aware of hospital inpatient fraud, hospital outpatient fraud, cost report fraud, hospital billing fraud, or other hospital system fraud, it’s time to act.
Take a courageous step, become a whistleblower, and call our experienced Hospital Fraud Attorneys today. Our Healthcare Whistleblower Law Firm has played a part in the recovery of over $6 billion collected and returned to taxpayers since the False Claims Act was amended in 1986. Call on our team with confidence.
Contact the Whistleblower Hospital Fraud Lawyers of Nolan, Auerbach & White to get started on a free and confidential review of your important case. Call our Qui Tam attorneys at 800-372-8304.
SPEAK WITH THE WHISTLEBLOWER FIRM
If you’ve become aware of fraud in the hospital setting, we may be able to help you. Whistleblowing in healthcare means you are bringing to light known abuses and working to restore much-needed funds for patient care. The Hospital Fraud Lawyers at Nolan Auerbach & White are here to potentially represent you in a qui tam lawsuit.
Under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act, hospital fraud whistleblowers may be entitled to collect a percentage of what has been recovered. Whistleblower rewards for Hospital Fraud vary from 15-30 percent of the amount collected.
Our hospital fraud lawyers can evaluate your potential case for you.
If you are aware of fraud within the hospital setting or healthcare industry, the law protects you as a whistleblower. We invite you to submit an overview of your case to our team of hospital fraud lawyers to begin this vital duty and service. Your interaction with our experienced hospital fraud attorneys is confidential. Contact us online or call us at 800-372-8304. to get started.
Learn More: Whistleblower Protection
Our Hospital Fraud Law Firm is familiar with the many vulnerabilities hospitals have to fraudulent behavior. We are fully qualified to represent you to report unethical medical billing practices and other instances of healthcare fraud.
Some of the most important steps our Hospital Fraud Attorneys recommend for how to report healthcare fraud include:
Learn More: Guide to Reporting Hospital Fraud
CONTACT A HOSPITAL FRAUD LAWYER
Hospital Fraud and other abuses exist in all healthcare industry segments and throughout the country. Our hospital fraud law firm can help when you’re ready.
Review some of the most common hospital fraud cases below.
Inpatient services must be medically necessary and constitute an appropriate level of care. Patient admissions must be medically necessary, and implicit within the payment is that patient discharges are not premature.
Upcoding APC diagnosis and the intentional manipulation of code assignments to avoid National Correct Coding Initiative (NCCI) edits are common forms of outpatient Hospital Fraud.
The Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) rules require hospitals to submit claims for all OPPS services provided at the same hospital, to the same patient, on the same day, unless certain conditions are met. The submission of multiple claims for OPPS services delivered to the same patient on the same day may also violate the False Claims Act.
Cost Report Fraud can include improper reporting of “pass-through” new technology and drugs, misreporting organ acquisition costs, false calculations with regard to graduate medical education (GME) and indirect graduate medical education (IME) costs, and more.
Patient transfers to certain post-acute care settings for certain designated Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) must be properly coded so that a hospital will receive a per diem transfer payment, rather than the full DRG payment. Inappropriate patient transfers between a host hospital and a hospital-within-a-hospital may constitute an FCA violation. Other outpatient hospital fraud, for example, can take the form of submitting claims for hospital technical components for services rendered by physicians in clinics and other settings that do not meet the criteria of “provider-based.”
The Office of Inspector General (OIG), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides Supplemental Compliance Guidance for Hospitals, highlighting some additional recognized areas that have an increased risk of fraud.
These include relationships between hospitals and physicians including referral sources. Financial relationships with referring physicians must fit squarely within statutory or regulatory exceptions to the Stark law. Compliance with Stark laws is mandatory, potentially resulting in significant financial exposure for hospitals that fail to comply.
Medical Director Agreements can be used inappropriately to pay physicians for referrals. Hospitals may also provide free or reduced cost hospital space, equipment, or personnel for physicians to conduct their private practices, in exchange for referrals. Arrangements that involve “conditioning privileges on a particular number of referrals or requiring the performance of a particular number of procedures often violate the [anti-kickback] statute.
Exclusive contracts with hospital-based physicians such as radiologists, pathologists, hospitalists, and anesthesiologists may be problematic. While contracts can involve certain reasonable administrative or limited clinical duties directly related to the hospital based professional services (including participation in an on-call rotation) at a reduced cost or no charge, the free services must reasonably reflect the value of the exclusivity conferred on the hospital-based physicians.
OIG remains suspicious of physician-owned joint ventures, noting that ”remuneration from a joint venture [e.g. dividends, profit distribution] might be a disguised payment for past or future referrals to the venture or to one or more of its participants.” When physicians invest in and make referrals to ancillary service providers such as diagnostic labs, medical office buildings, or hospital ownership, the OIG views such arrangements as potential vehicles for impermissible referrals.
Our experienced Hospital Fraud Lawyers are available to discuss in-depth areas of Healthcare Fraud. Other common types of healthcare fraud includes:
Need to know the strength of your case? Submit your facts confidentially to our experienced Hospital Fraud Law Firm today for a free case evaluation.
CONTACT A HOSPITAL FRAUD LAWYER
If you’ve become aware of healthcare fraud, contact the experienced team of Healthcare Fraud Lawyers at Nolan, Auerbach & White. Our Whistleblower Firm is ready to hear your important story. Fill out the Client Intake Form, and move forward with confidence.
Expose Healthcare Fraud through the qui tam lawsuit process, and join the many whistleblower heroes who have stepped forward and exposed violations of the law, taking a stand for justice and taxpayers in the healthcare industry. It could mean that you share a percentage of the funds recovered from fraudulent activity by working with one of our experienced Healthcare Fraud lawyers.
Get started by filling out our online form, or give our experienced team of healthcare fraud attorneys a call today at 800.372.8304.
Hospital fraud typically results in a violation of the False Claims Act. Hospitals may employ a number of schemes that constitute fraudulent activities to include DRG and APC upcoding, paying kickbacks in exchange for referrals and additional abuses. To learn more, click here to contact our team of Hospital Fraud Attorneys.
Yes, eligible whistleblowers may receive between 15-30 percent of the amount collected in hospital fraud cases. To learn more, begin a free review of your important case.
The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that most healthcare fraud relates to “fraudulent billing, such as billing for services that were not provided (about 43 percent of cases) and billing for services that were not medically necessary (about 25 percent).” A whistleblower hospital fraud attorney can guide private individuals through the legal process and help accurately identify fraudulent activity. Have more questions? Contact the Whistleblower Hospital Fraud Law Firm.
Kathleen Hawkins, RN MSN, had been employed by Defendant, Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) for approximately 6 years when she decided she had had enough of trying to change the hospital system from within.
CHW, a California not-for-profit corporation that operated hospitals in California, Arizona, and Nevada, was at the time the eighth largest hospital system in the nation and the largest not-for-profit hospital provider in California.
Joe Strom contacted us in 2005. We were very grateful that he did. We immediately formed an all-star legal team and a process to stop a very harmful pharmaceutical marketing strategy. It was this process we set into motion that ultimately returned hundreds of millions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury, and a portion of that, very well-deserved, into Joe’s bank account.
Joe told us a very troubling story about the off-label promotion of a pharmaceutical drug for patients who already suffered from chronic heart failure.
Bruce Moilan was a seasoned hospital systems expert by the time he contacted our Firm. At the time he decided to file his qui tam lawsuit, he was employed by South Texas Health System as a System Director for Materials Management. In this position, he oversaw $24 million in annual purchases of supplies and equipment and helped determine budget, reduction and cost analysis throughout the contract bidding and negotiations process. His job was to insure proper implementation for purchasing, receiving and management of inventory, for McAllen Hospitals, L.P.
