Source: Pexels and Jonathan Borba
Boston, Massachusetts-based Massachusetts General Hospital, the largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, has agreed to pay $14.6 million to resolve allegations brought under the Federal and Massachusetts False Claims Acts.
In False Claims Acts cases the relator is the person who brings the claim against the individual or company. In this case, the relator was a former anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The relator claimed that some of Massachusetts General Hospital’s orthopedic surgeons engaged in “overlapping and concurrent surgeries that required two patients to be under anesthesia at the same time.” The relator claimed that this caused Massachusetts General Hospital to “fraudulently” bill Medicare and Medicaid.
According to court documents, relator alleged that the hospital’s use of concurrent surgery “endangered patients” because of the “unnecessarily prolonged administrations of anesthesia.” Relator also alleged that concurrent surgery “violated informed consent.” Additionally, relator argued that concurrent surgery “violated record-keeping regulations” because surgeons did not keep accurate records. Relator also contended that all of this “caused government payors to pay for work that teaching physicians did not do.”
In addition to the settlement payment, Massachusetts General Hospital will also add language to its consent form for Massachusetts-based hospitals. The language aims to inform patients...
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