May 31, 2023 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Testing
Federal prosecutors build the new healthcare-related fraud cases on previous nationwide enforcement actions from 2022 Federal charges have once again been brought against a number of physicians and clinical laboratory owners in what the US Department of Justice described as the “largest ever” coordinated nationwide law enforcement effort against COVID-19 pandemic-related healthcare fraud. In total, the DOJ filed criminal charges against 18 defendants in five states plus the territory of Puerto...
Feb 3, 2023 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory News, Laboratory Testing, Pathology and Clinical Laboratory Conferences
Healthcare attorneys advise medical laboratory leaders to ensure staff understand difference between EKRA and other federal fraud laws, such as the Anti-kickback Statute More than four years have passed since Congress passed the law and yet the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018 (EKRA) continues to cause anxiety and confusion. In particular are the differences in the safe harbors between the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) and Stark Law versus EKRA. This creates uncertainty...
Mar 8, 2022 | Clinical Laboratory/ Pathology Coding, Billing, and Collection Resources, Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Sales and Marketing, Laboratory Testing, News From Dark Daily, Pathology and Clinical Laboratory Conferences
The Department of Justice steps beyond the law’s original focus on opioid-related lab testing fraud An interesting aspect with enforcement of the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018 (EKRA) is the government’s willingness to go after charges tied to fraudulent COVID-19 testing. The case U.S. vs. Malena Badon Lepetich provides a good example of this approach. A grand jury indicted Lepetich on various healthcare fraud charges last year, including that she allegedly offered to pay...
Sep 17, 2021 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Managed Care Contracts & Payer Reimbursement
It did not take long for fraudsters to pursue hundreds of billions of federal dollars designated to support SARS-CoV-2 testing and it is rare when federal prosecutors bring cases only a few months after illegal lab testing schemes are identified As if the COVID-19 pandemic weren’t bad enough, unscrupulous clinical laboratory operators quickly sought to take advantage of the critical demand for SARS-CoV-2 testing and defraud the federal government. Unfortunately for the many defendants in these...
Jul 15, 2020 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
Charges against this life science company executive include healthcare fraud as well as the first COVID-19 related securities fraud In the first securities fraud prosecution involving clinical laboratory COVID-19 testing, the US federal Department of Justice (DOJ) charged the president of a Sunnyvale, Calif., life sciences biotechnology company with participating in a scheme to mislead investors and also to commit healthcare fraud, stated a DOJ press release. The DOJ charged Mark Schena, PhD,...
