Beaver Medical to Pay $5M to Settle False Claims; Whistleblower to Get $850K
Beaver Medical Group L.P. (Beaver) and one of its physicians, Dr. Sherif Khalil, have agreed to pay a total of $5,039,180 to resolve allegations that they reported invalid diagnoses to Medicare Advantage plans and thereby caused those plans to receive inflated payments from Medicare, the Justice Department announced. Beaver is headquartered in Redlands, California.
Under the Medicare Advantage program, also known as the Medicare Part C program, Medicare beneficiaries may opt to obtain health care coverage through private insurance plans that are owned and operated by private insurers known as Medicare Advantage Organizations (MAOs). Medicare pays MAOs a fixed, monthly amount to provide health care coverage to Medicare beneficiaries who enroll in their plans. Medicare adjusts these monthly payments to reflect the health status of each beneficiary. In general, Medicare pays MAOs more for sicker beneficiaries and less for healthier ones.
MAOs often contract with physician groups and other healthcare providers to provide care to Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in their plans. These healthcare providers report diagnoses and other information to the MAOs, which the MAOs then submit to Medicare in order to obtain higher risk-adjusted payments.
In this case, several MAOs in California contracted with Beaver to provide health care to Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in their plans. The MAOs often compensated Beaver with a share of the payments that the MAOs received from Medicare for the beneficiaries under Beaver’s care. Thus, Beaver had a financial incentive to submit additional diagnosis codes to the MAOs in order to increase the payments that the MAOs received from Medicare. The settlement resolves allegations that Beaver and Dr. Khalil knowingly submitted diagnoses that were not supported by the beneficiaries’ medical records in order to inflate the payments that the MAO received from Medicare.
The settlement resolves allegations originally brought in a lawsuit filed under the qui tam, or whistleblower, provisions of the False Claims Act by Dr. David Nutter, a former employee of Beaver. The act permits private parties to sue on behalf of the government for false claims for government funds and to receive a share of any recovery. Dr. Nutter will receive approximately $850,000.
The Chanler Group, in association with the Hirst Law Group, represents whistleblowers who take action under the False Claims Act to report fraud committed against the federal and state governments. We have years of experience representing whistleblower clients who expose every kind of fraud against the government, including health care fraud, contract fraud, and tax fraud. Read more about our expertise in False Claims Act cases and how you can take action.