For a hospital that basically said "Trust us" on beginning the move from a public, governmental entity to a private, nonprofit organization in 2022, a federal whistleblower lawsuit alleging illegal billing practices and allowing doctors-in-training to operate on patients without physician supervision is not a good look for Erlanger Health System.
The whistleblowers, who filed their complaint in April 2021 in U.S. District Court under the federal False Claims Act and Tennessee Medicaid False Claims Act, are three former Erlanger doctors who say the concerns they raised cost them their jobs.
They allege their ouster was part of a "malicious and unlawful campaign of retaliation" by former Erlanger CEO Dr. Will Jackson, whose leadership at the hospital was described as chaotic in a 2020 online column. Hired as CEO in late 2019, he and Erlanger parted ways in June 2022, before his contract expired and with no reason given for his exit.
False Claims Act suits must be filed under seal to give the government an opportunity to investigate the allegations and decide whether to take the case forward, which happens in about 20% of cases. If the government declines to intervene, which an Erlanger spokeswoman said the state of Tennessee did, the whistleblowers have the option to proceed themselves, which is what they are doing.
The spokeswoman said Erlanger "disputes the merit of the allegation" and said "no instances of patient harm relating to these allegations have been identified."...
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