Nolan Auerbach & White are experienced Hospital Fraud Attorneys helping courageous whistleblowers.
The Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) was first implemented for services furnished on or after August 1, 2000.
Under the OPPS, Medicare pays for hospital outpatient services on a rate-per-service basis that varies according to the ambulatory payment classification (APC) group to which the service is assigned, and the Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) codes (which include certain Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes) and descriptors to identify and group the services within each APC group. The OPPS includes payment for most (but not all) hospital outpatient services. Medicare Fraud patterns commonly include upcoding the APC to a higher-reimbursed discharge diagnosis, and whistleblowers have exposed these and other violations of the False Claims Act.
The OPPS rate is an unadjusted national payment amount that includes the Medicare payment and the beneficiary copayment. This rate is divided into a labor-related amount and a non labor-related amount. The labor-related amount is adjusted for area wage differences using the hospital inpatient wage index value for the locality in which the hospital or CMHC is located.
While most hospital outpatient services are payable under the OPPS, payment for ambulance, physical and occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology services, are made under a fee schedule. Also excluded from the OPPS are those services that are paid under fee schedules, for example, the professional services of physicians and non-physician practitioners paid under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS); laboratory services paid under the clinical diagnostic laboratory fee schedule (CLFS); services for beneficiaries with end stage renal disease (ESRD) that are paid under the ESRD composite rate; and services and procedures that require an inpatient stay that are paid under the hospital inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS).
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.
