A former employee of Hospice of Arizona L.C. will receive $1.8 million as a reward for filing a whistleblower lawsuit that exposed improper Medicare billing practices.
To resolve allegations asserted in this False Claims Act case, Hospice of Arizona L.C., American Hospice Management LLC, and American Hospice Management Holdings LLC have agreed to pay $12 million for allegedly billing Medicare for ineligible hospice services.
Under Medicare rules, the hospice benefit is available for patients who have a life expectancy of six months or less if their disease runs its normal course. The whistleblower in this case alleged
that the defendants pressured staff to find more patients eligible for Medicare, adopted procedures that delayed and discouraged staff from discharging patients from hospice when they were no longer appropriate for such services, and did not implement an adequate compliance program that might have addressed these problems.
For more information on this case, click here: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/March/13-civ-326.html