A federal appeals panel has again rejected False Claims Act allegations made by a former nursing home executive assistant, ruling that her case was too close in nature to one already settled.
The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit last week upheld a September 2023 decision to dismiss former assistant and controller Terri Winnon’s lawsuit against eight Texas nursing homes, the owners she worked for and a major rehab therapy firm.
Winnon accused the nursing homes of upcoding patients for more therapy minutes than necessary under the previous federal payment system and said the facility owners had falsified Medicare cost reports.
The federal government previously declined to intervene in the case, meaning the whistleblower was left to pursue fraud allegations on her own in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. A judge there called her accusations against the facilities and RehabCare “woefully” short of meeting legal requirements to proceed, and noted that her filing lacked the kind of evidence usually seen in False Claims cases.
Considering her appeal last week, a three-judge Circuit Court panel wrote that Winnon also failed to distinguish her allegations from those in a 2011 case in which two former therapists successfully argued that RehabCare engaged in overbilling. That case, US ex rel. Halpin & Fahey v. Kindred Healthcare, ended in a $125 million settlement in 2016.
RehabCare was later acquired by Select Rehabilitation.
Winnon referred to the...
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