Health Care Enforcement & Investigations

On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued its long-awaited and closely watched decision in United States v. AseraCare Inc.. The court ruled that a claim cannot be deemed false under the False Claims Act (FCA) based on a difference in clinical judgment.  Instead, there must be proof of an objective falsehood. More than three years have passed since the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama issued the series of rulings that gave rise to the Eleventh Circuit case. 

On August 20, 2019, the United States exercised its authority under the False Claims Act (FCA) to seek dismissal of a relator’s qui tam suit because of the defendant’s burdensome discovery demands, in Polansky v. Executive Health Resources, Inc.  Since the lawsuit’s inception in 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and other government agencies have attempted to fend off a series of burdensome Touhy requests but failed to do so.  Meanwhile, the scope of discovery has ballooned.  Collectively, DOJ and HHS have deployed six attorneys to work this case.  And, to top it off, DOJ is concerned about relator’s credibility and his ability to prove a FCA violation.  DOJ’s dismissal request thus comes as no surprise.

Earlier this month, the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (OIG) released two reports regarding its concerns and recommendations related to quality of care at hospice facilities. These reports follow a portfolio report that the OIG released last summer regarding significant vulnerabilities in the Medicare hospice benefit. In these reports, the OIG outlines several quality of care issues and recommends several ways that CMS should strengthen safeguards, all of which may further increase enforcement in an already heavily scrutinized area.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals recently dismissed a relator’s False Claims Act (“FCA”) case under the pre-Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) version of the public disclosure bar. The court decided in U.S. ex rel. Denis v. Medco that to escape the FCA’s public disclosure bar by qualifying as an “original source” under the pre-ACA version of the FCA, a relator must have first-hand, non-derivative knowledge of conduct giving rise to the FCA claim.

On June 26, 2019, a divided Supreme Court in Kisor v. Wilkie issued one of its most important administrative law decisions in decades. The Supreme Court decided to uphold, but dramatically narrow, the doctrine of judicial deference to agency regulations, known as Auer deference, but at the same time unanimously found for petitioner James Kisor in overturning the Federal Circuit’s affirmance of the Board of Veteran’s Appeals decision to deny part of his claim for Vietnam War disability benefits.  We discuss below the majority and minority opinions on Auer deference, the narrow unanimous holding of reversal, and the importance of this decision.

Over the last two years, much of the healthcare world has been watching the government’s prosecution of Insys Therapeutics for its sales and marketing practices related to its Subsys spray.  Subsys is powerful and highly addictive fentanyl spray (administered under the tongue) that was approved by the FDA in 2012 for the treatment of persistent breakthrough pain in adult cancer patients who were already receiving, and tolerant to, regular opioid therapy.  On June 5, 2019, DOJ announced a global resolution with Insys, including criminal pleas, a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA), a civil settlement agreement, and a Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA).  Then, on June 10, 2019, Insys filed for bankruptcy protection, which triggered DOJ and HHS’s ability to upend these agreements and impose powerful criminal, civil, and exclusion remedies against Insys. While much of the coverage of this case over the last few years has focused on the high-profile prosecution and conviction of company executives (including Insys’s founder) and other employees who were accused of paying kickbacks to prescribers in exchange for increased prescriptions and increased doses of Subsys, the resolution of this case on the corporate side has proven to be equally fascinating. 

In the latest development in the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division’s ongoing investigation into the generic pharmaceutical industry, Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with DOJ. The terms of the DPA require Heritage to pay a $225,000 criminal penalty and provide full cooperation with the ongoing investigation. The one-count felony charge, filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on May 30, alleges that Heritage violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by conspiring with multiple unnamed parties to divide up the domestic market and fix prices for glyburide, a diabetes medication, from April 2014 through December 2015. According to DOJ, the DPA provides that the United States will not prosecute Heritage for three years.

Earlier this week the OIG took the somewhat unusual step of issuing a fraud alert directed to Medicare beneficiaries (rather than to Medicare providers) regarding “fraud schemes” that involve genetic testing. According to the OIG, beneficiaries are being offered genetic tests in order to obtain their Medicare information, which is then used to commit identity theft or to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare. Beneficiaries are being targeted through telemarketing calls, booths at public events, health fairs, and door-to-door visits.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued policy guidance on May 6, 2019, about providing credit in False Claims Act (FCA) settlements to corporations for “disclosure, cooperation, and remediation." DOJ has never previously issued guidance regarding credit in FCA matters. This guidance, coupled with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 (which requires DOJ to specify the amount of “restitution” or “remediation” at the time of settlement), provides meaningful specificity as to what conduct constitutes disclosure, cooperation, and remediation, as well as data for evaluating whether credit is actually reflected in negotiated FCA settlements. This policy guidance is contained in the Justice Manual, Section 4-4.112.

As part of our ongoing discussion of the Polukoff False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam case (involving allegations that certain heart procedures performed by a cardiologist, and billed for by two hospital defendants, were not medically necessary), we reported in February that some defendants filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court. 

As many of our readers know, we have been closely following the Polukoff False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam case in the Tenth Circuit for the lessons it might offer in defending FCA cases premised on allegations related to lack of medical necessity (among other topics).  Recently, we had the opportunity to consider this case from a different angle: the lessons it might offer to bankruptcy counsel advising clients who are or have been the subject of a health care fraud investigation and/or FCA qui tam case. 

The Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari last Monday in U.S. ex rel. Prather v. Brookdale Senior Living Communities, Inc., No. 17-5826 (6th Cir. June 11, 2018), again declining to revisit or clarify the False Claims Act's “materiality” standard set forth in its 2016 decision in Universal Health Services v. United States ex rel. Escobar, 136 S. Ct. 1989 (2016). 

In Prather, the relator alleged that defendant Brookdale Senior Living Communities, Inc. (Brookdale), a home health provider, submitted bills for medical services that were “untimely” signed and certified by physicians in violation of Medicare regulations.  When submitting Medicare claims, Brookdale purportedly did not obtain the required physician certifications attesting that the medical services provided by Brookdale were necessary until months after establishing a patient’s plan of care.  Because Medicare regulations under 42 C.F.R. § 424.22(a)(2) require physician certifications “at the time the plan of care is established or as soon thereafter as possible,” the relator alleged that Brookdale’s untimely certifications rendered the claims false under the implied false certification theory.  The district court dismissed the complaint on materiality grounds, holding that the noncompliance was insubstantial and that the relator failed to allege that the government had ever denied a claim based on a violation of the timing requirement under the Medicare regulations.

Last week, a U.S. district court judge in the Southern District of Florida upheld a magistrate judge’s decision to dismiss False Claims Act (FCA) allegations against a compounding pharmacy, its private equity firm owner, and two individuals. DOJ filed its complaint in intervention last February against the pharmacy, Patient Care America (PCA); its private equity backer, Riordan Lewis & Haden, Inc.; and two individual executives. The government alleged that the parties engaged in an illegal kickback scheme that resulted in the submission of false claims to TRICARE for expensive compounded drugs. This case is reportedly the first in which the federal government intervened against a private equity firm owner.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced a $1.99 million False Claims Act (FCA) settlement with GenomeDx Biosciences Corp. (“GenomeDx”), a laboratory headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia with operations in San Diego. The matter arose as the result of a qui tam case brought by two former employees in September 2017.

Last week the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a $57 million settlement with electronic health record (EHR) software vendor Greenway Health LLC (Greenway).  According to DOJ, Greenway violated the False Claims Act (FCA) by fraudulently obtaining certification of its software and misrepresenting its software’s capabilities to customers, thereby causing its customers to submit false attestations of “meaningful use” of EHR technology when seeking to qualify for incentive payments available through the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Program.  The complaint also alleged that Greenway illegally paid kickbacks to customer in exchange for recommendations to prospective new customers.

On January 9, 2019, AdvaMed announced revisions to its Code of Ethics.  As any medical product business knows, compliance with the AdvaMed Code of Ethics (the “Code”) is essential.  While the Code is voluntary, many states require medical product manufacturers and companies to adopt compliance programs consistent with the Code.  The amendments will be effective January 1, 2020.

Mintz/ML Strategies’ 4th Annual Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Industry Summit has been scheduled for Thursday, May 2, 2019 – mark your calendars! People from across the industry will gather for one day to share insights about issues that the players in this complex marketplace are tackling.

As many of our readers know, we have been closely following the Polukoff False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam case, which is based on allegations that certain heart procedures performed by a cardiologist were not medically necessary.  The latest development in this case came a few weeks ago, when defendants Intermountain Health Care, Inc. and IHC Health Services, Inc. d/b/a Intermountain Medical Center (Intermountain) filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari with the United States Supreme Court. The Petition raised two issues: (1) whether a court may create an exception to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)’s particularity requirement when the plaintiff claims that only the defendant possesses the information needed to satisfy that requirement; and (2) whether the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions violate the Appointments Clause of Article II of the Constitution.

Over the last few weeks, we published a number of posts examining important developments and trends in 2018 as well as what we expect to see in 2019. Our posts cover a range of topics, including enforcement and litigation, HIPAA and the FDA. In case you missed one, below are links to all of our Year In Review posts.

As in years past, the False Claims Act (FCA) remained a powerful health care enforcement tool in 2018, and FCA investigations and litigation persisted, fueled mainly by hundreds of lawsuits filed annually by relators, including 645 new qui tam actions initiated in FY 2018.