Citizens Medical Center, a county-owned hospital in Victoria, Texas, paid the United States government $21,750,000 to settle, without admitting wrongdoing, a whistleblower suit under the False Claims Act. The whistleblowers, competing physicians, will receive $5,981,250 from the recovery.
Deal structure. Governance. M&A.
Those were among the subjects of this past weekend’s Advanced Institute For Anesthesia Practice Management in Las Vegas, the premier national conference on actionable anesthesia business issues.
All you wanted to do was to share office space, not cell space. Plan accordingly, the devil is in the details.
When we talk about joint ventures in healthcare, we tend to think of illegality, as in “suspect joint venture,” the pejorative term crafted by the OIG.
From cash kickbacks to the company model to phony leases, deals between referring physicians and those physicians and facilities receiving referrals are subject to increasing scrutiny.
Last October, a federal trial court ordered Tuomey Healthcare System to pay approximately $237 million as a result of Stark Law failures that gave rise to a False Claims Act violation.
Joint ventures between entities or individuals in the position to refer and the entities or individuals which receive those referrals are often disguised kickback arrangements.
Obamacare mandates that physicians participating in Medicare or Medicaid have operating compliance programs. Turn the mandate into a strategic advantage.
Don’t settle for market parity. Learn how physician groups can negotiate terms that exceed fair‑market value for strategic advantage.