Health Law Advisor

Six months from the date of closing. That’s how long acquiring companies have under the newly announced Department of Justice (DOJ) Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Safe Harbor Policy to disclose misconduct discovered in the context of a merger or acquisition – whether discovered pre or post-acquisition.  And the acquiring company has one year from the date of closing to remediate, as well as provide restitution to any victims and disgorge  any profits.

Over the last two years, the DOJ has made clear its priority to encourage companies to self-disclose misconduct aiming to ...

It has been four years since Congress enacted the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act (“EKRA”), codified at 18 U.S.C. § 220. EKRA initially targeted patient brokering and kickback schemes within the addiction treatment and recovery spaces. However, since EKRA was expansively drafted to also apply to clinical laboratories (it applies to improper referrals for any “service”, regardless of the payor), public as well as private insurance plans and even self-pay patients fall within the reach of the statute.

Building on attempts in recent years to strengthen the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) white collar criminal enforcement, on September 15, 2022, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced revisions to DOJ’s corporate criminal enforcement policies. The new policies, and those that are in development, further attempt to put pressure on companies to implement effective compliance policies and to self-report if there are problems. Notably, the new DOJ policies set forth changes to existing DOJ policies through a “combination of carrots and sticks – with a mix of incentives and deterrence,” with the goal of “giving general counsels and chief compliance officers the tools they need to make a business case for responsible corporate behavior” through seven key areas:

On Monday, August 12, 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced a new addition to its regional Medicare Fraud Strike Forces: a Newark/Philadelphia Regional Medicare Strike Force that will target both healthcare fraud and opioid overprescription.[1] The newly-formed Newark/Philadelphia Strike Force joins nine existing regional Medicare Strike Forces, all of which are focused in geographical areas of high healthcare fraud risk: Miami, Florida; Los Angeles, California; Detroit, Michigan; Southern Texas; Southern Louisiana; Brooklyn, New York; Tampa ...

On April 18, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida adopted a magistrate judge's recommendation to grant summary judgment in favor of defendant BayCare Health System ("BayCare") in a False Claims Act whistleblower suit that focused on physician lease agreements in a hospital-owned medical office building, thereby dismissing the whistleblower's suit.

The whistleblower, a local real-estate appraiser, alleged that BayCare improperly induced Medicare referrals in violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute and the Stark Law because the lease agreements with its physician tenants included free use of the hospital parking garage and free valet parking for the physician tenants and their patients, as well as certain benefits related to the tax-exempt classification of the building. The brief ruling affirms the magistrate judge's determination that the whistleblower failed to present sufficient evidence to establish either the existence of an improper financial relationship under the Stark Law or the requisite remuneration intended to induce referrals under the Anti-Kickback Statute.

The alleged violation under both the Anti-Kickback Statute and the Stark Law centered on the whistleblower's argument that the lease agreements conferred a financial benefit on physician tenants – primarily, because they were not required to reimburse BayCare for garage or valet parking that was available to the tenants, their staff and their patients.  However, the whistleblower presented no evidence to show that the parking was provided for free or based on the physician tenants' referrals.  To the contrary, BayCare presented evidence stating that the garage parking benefits (and their related costs) were factored into the leases and corresponding rental payments for each tenant.  Further, BayCare presented evidence to support that the valet services were not provided to, or used by, the physician tenants or their staff, but were offered only to patients and visitors to "protect their health and safety."

In light of the evidence presented by BayCare, and the failure of the whistleblower to present any evidence that contradicted or otherwise undermined BayCare's position, the magistrate judge found that: (i) no direct or indirect compensation arrangement existed between BayCare and the physician tenants that would implicate the Stark Law, and (ii) BayCare did not intend for the parking benefits to induce the physician tenants' referrals in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute.