The US government has joined a whistleblower’s suit alleging that Cigna Corp. and others violated the False Claims Act by submitting false and invalid patient diagnosis information to inflate payments from Medicare.

Cigna knew it was billing Medicare despite relying on home health visit vendors that didn’t perform testing, imaging, or other necessary steps to make diagoses reliable, according to the government’s intervening complaint filed Oct. 14 with the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.

Cigna falsely certified to the government that it provided accurate data because patients didn’t receive any treatment for the purported medical conditions, and the diagnoses didn’t comply with Medicare’s requirements for coding diagnoses, the government says.

The government is joining a suit initiated in 2017 by whistleblower Robert A. Cutler, an attorney who previously worked for a Cigna vendor, the complaint says.

The case was transferred from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York to the Middle District of Tennessee in 2021, it says.

Cause of action: False Claims Act, unjust enrichment, payment by mistake.

Relief: Damages, penalty.

Response: “We are proud of the high-quality, affordable Medicare Advantage benefits we are privileged to provide to beneficiaries...

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