On April 11, 2022, the United States filed a complaint-in-intervention, alleging that Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (MLH) and Methodist Healthcare Memphis Hospitals (collectively, Methodist), paid unlawful kickbacks to West Clinic, P.C. (West) in exchange for West’s patient referrals, in violation of the False Claims Act (FCA) and the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS).
As outlined in greater detail below, the DOJ alleges that Methodist knowingly agreed to pay West millions of dollars in kickbacks for the revenues Methodist expected to – and ultimately did – realize from West’s referrals. The arrangement lasted from January 1, 2012, through December 31, 2018, which includes time even after Methodist knew that the United States was investigating these allegations following the filing of the whistleblowers’ lawsuit.
The case was initially filed as a qui tam action on May 30, 2017, by Jeffrey H. Liebman, the former President of Methodist University Hospital. Then, in December 2019, David M. Stern, M.D., the former Executive Dean and Vice Chancellor at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, who served on the Board of Directors of MLH from 2011 to 2017, joined the lawsuit. Stern was also a member of the Executive Cancer Council and the Steering Committee for the West Cancer Center.
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