Yesterday, the Justice Department announced that Community Health Systems, Inc., the nation’s largest operator of acute care hospitals, has agreed to pay $98.15 to settle multiple lawsuits against it filed under the False Claims Act. Nine whistleblowers stepped forward to report “a deliberate corporate-driven scheme” to bilk the U.S. taxpayers of millions of dollars.
This settlement illustrates the government’s emphasis on combating health care fraud and marks another achievement for the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) initiative, which was announced in May 2009 by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The partnership between the two departments has focused efforts to reduce and prevent Medicare and Medicaid financial fraud through enhanced cooperation. One of the most powerful tools in this effort is the False Claims Act. Since January 2009, the Justice Department has recovered a total of more than $20.2 billion through False Claims Act cases, with more than $14 billion of that amount recovered in cases involving fraud against federal health care programs.
For more information on this settlement see the DOJ Press Release.