The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that it had recovered more than $2.8 billion from False Claims Act (FCA) cases in the 2018 fiscal year. Although this number continues a multi-year downtrend in overall FCA recoveries, healthcare fraud remains a major DOJ focus, with $2.5 billion of the recoveries (ie, 87.25% – the highest proportion in at least the past decade) coming from healthcare cases:
This $2.5 billion was extracted from various segments of the healthcare industry, including through major settlements with:
- pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers;
- hospitals;
- a physician association; and
- a wholesaler.
That sum is the fifth largest annual healthcare recovery ever and the second largest in the past five years. Of the $2.5 billion, $568 million was recovered in non-qui tam actions – the second highest annual sum of healthcare recoveries from original actions.
In addition to emphasising healthcare recoveries, the DOJ's press release highlighted actions against individuals, including a $114 million kickback judgment against three individual defendants and a separate $5.5 million kickback judgment against two individuals and their professional corporations.
The DOJ's announcement can be found here.
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