On Oct. 12, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had entered into a historic $85 million settlement with Cardiac Imaging Inc., a mobile PET scan provider, and its founder and owner, Sam Kancherlapalli, to resolve claims that they had violated the False Claims Act (FCA), the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS), and the Stark Law.
The case was initiated by whistleblower Lynda Pinto, who was a former billing manager at Cardiac Imaging, and the resolution is considered historic in that it is believed to be the largest healthcare settlement under the FCA ever to come out of the Southern District of Texas.
Of the settlement amount, Cardiac Imaging Inc. has agreed to pay over $75 million, and Mr. Kancherlapalli has agreed to pay over $10 million. Kancherlapalli had allegedly paid kickbacks to refer cardiologists in the form of fees, ostensibly for supervising PET scans, that were far above fair market value. The alleged misconduct occurred over a ten-year period, between 2014 and 2023.
Specifically, with Kancherlapalli’s oversight and approval, Cardiac Imaging paid kickbacks to refer cardiologists in the form of above-fair market value fees of $500 or more per hour, ostensibly for the cardiologists to supervise the PET scans for the patients they referred. These fees substantially exceeded fair-market value for the cardiologists’ services, the DOJ alleged, because Cardiac Imaging paid the referring cardiologists for each hour they spent scanning the cardiologists’...
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