Recovery Home Care Settles False Medicare Claims for $1.1M; Whistleblower to Get $198K
Recovery Home Care and National Home Care Holdings LLC have agreed to pay $1.1 million to resolve allegations that the Recovery Home Care entities knowingly submitted or caused the submission of false claims to Medicare, the U.S. Department of Justice announced today. The Recovery Home Care entities provide home health care services to Medicare beneficiaries and were purchased by National Home Care Holdings LLC in 2012, after the conduct addressed by the settlement occurred.
Recovery Home Care allegedly paid dozens of physicians thousands of dollars per month to perform patient chart reviews. According to the government’s lawsuit, the physicians were over-compensated for any actual work they performed and, in reality, payments to the physicians were used to induce them to refer their patients to Recovery Home Care, in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute and the Stark Law.
The Anti-Kickback Statute and the Stark Law are intended to ensure that a physician’s medical judgment is not compromised by improper financial incentives. The Anti-Kickback Statute prohibits offering, paying, soliciting or receiving remuneration to induce referrals of items or services covered by federal health care programs, including Medicare. The Stark Law forbids a home health care provider from billing Medicare for certain services referred by physicians who have a financial relationship with the entity.
The settlement partially resolves allegations made in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Tampa, Florida, by Gregory Simony, a former employee of Recovery Home Care. The lawsuit was filed under the qui tam, or whistleblower, provisions of the False Claims Act, which permit private individuals to sue on behalf of the government for false claims and to share in any recovery. The act also allows the government to intervene and take over the action, as it did in part in this case. Simony will receive $198,000 of the recovered funds.
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.