The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida announced on Sept. 19, 2019, that it settled a qui tam False Claims Act case in which a private equity firm was a named defendant. See United States ex rel. Medrano and Lopez v. Diabetic Care Rx LLC, d/b/a Patient Care America, et al., No. 15-CV-62617 (S.D. Fla.). On Sept. 9, 2019, in a win for hospice and other health care providers, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in United States v. Aseracare, Inc., — F.3d — (11th Cir. 2019) that a mere difference in medical judgment cannot rise to a false statement under the False Claims Act. This case involved hospice care and whether the defendant improperly certified patients as being terminally ill so as to meet the Medicare requirement for hospice services.
Click here for the full GT Alert, which discusses these two cases.