HOUSTON - United Memorial Medical Center LLC has agreed to pay $2 million, along with additional contingent payments, to settle alleged violations of the False Claims Act.
UMMC has operated hospitals in the Houston area before and is accused of making excessive claims for cost-outlier payments from government health care programs. Additionally, they are alleged to have double-billed the government for COVID-19 tests that were also billed to the State of Texas or the City of Houston.
According to the UMMC and the United States agreement, the settlement funds, totaling over $2 million, will be paid by one of UMMC’s principals, Ravishanker Mallapuram. UMMC has guaranteed the payment of these funds. U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani for the Southern District of Texas stated that the settlement is significant.
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"This over $2 million settlement is significant. We depend upon medical providers to be good stewards of a community’s healthcare services and of the federally funded programs that pay for those services. UMMC made millions by overbilling those healthcare programs and intentionally double billing for COVID-19 testing," said Hamdani. "Instead of returning those monies to America’s taxpayers, they pocketed the money for themselves. Finding the wrongdoing and lost monies in these types of cases involves complexities akin to playing three-dimensional chess, but know this, the...
As a healthcare worker in Pennsylvania, I’m writing to urge our state senators to reject the False Claims Act legislation. While this bill is being advertised as a way to reduce fraud in our healt...