This is the first post in this year’s series examining important trends in white collar law and investigations. Join us in the weeks ahead as we provide updates on new developments and emerging trends in a number of white collar spaces. Up next: trends in anti-corruption.
A perennial focus of regulators, health care fraud enforcement remained active in 2021 and is expected to continue in the year ahead.… More
The United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts is proactively seeking to find, investigate, and prosecute unlawful attempts to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic and is asking hospitals to assist. U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling sent a letter to leaders of Massachusetts hospitals asking them to report any “individuals and companies that may have acquired vital medical supplies in excess of what they would reasonably use, or for the purpose of charging exorbitant prices.” The Secretary of Health and Human Services has designated 15 categories of supplies as “scarce,” thereby enabling prosecutors to seek certain civil and criminal enforcement remedies against anyone accused of hoarding or gouging prices for those supplies. … More
Editors’ Note: This is the fourth in our start-of-year series examining important trends in white collar law and investigations in the coming year. Our previous entry discussed anti-corruption trends in 2020. Up next: a look at State Attorney General trends. Look for additional posts throughout the month of January.
More than halfway into the Donald Trump administration,… More
Editors’ Note: This is the second in our start-of-year series examining important trends in white collar law and investigations in the coming year. Our previous entry discussed SEC enforcement in 2020. Up next: a look at trends in anti-corruption and under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Look for additional posts throughout the month of January.
2019 saw ongoing action in the healthcare space.… More
Recently, a Florida federal judge dismissed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) False Claims Act (FCA) allegations against a compounding drug pharmacy and the pharmacy’s private equity (PE) owner. For two reasons, the case may be illustrative of the DOJ’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of what it perceives as fraud within the healthcare industry.
First, it is noteworthy that DOJ suffered a dismissal of its FCA claims. … More
The First Circuit recently revisited the pleading standard for retaliation claims under the False Claims Act, and reiterated its prior position that such claims are not subject to the same heightened pleading standard as direct FCA violation claims.
In Guilfoile v. Shields, 913 F.3d 178 (1st Cir. 2019), a former president for a group of healthcare entities that provided specialty pharmacy services to hospitals alleged the entities offered illegal “referral fees” to a consulting group to induce hospitals to award the entities contracts. … More
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced recently that it reached a $63.5 million settlement with pathology lab Inform Diagnostics related to allegations of False Claims Act (FCA) and Stark Law violations. The government alleged that the company had illegally provided referral-source doctors with subsidies for electronic health records (EHR) systems and free or discounted technology consulting services. The case, which developed out of a whistleblower complaint, was prosecuted as a civil matter with the coordination multiple DOJ offices,… More