Dive Brief:

• Precision Lens, a Bloomington, Minn.-based seller of eye surgery products, and owner Paul Ehlen must pay $487 million after a jury found the company violated the False Claims Act and paid kickbacks to doctors for using its products.
• The company offered physicians free travel and entertainment tickets for using its products, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota said in a statement on its website Monday. The gifts included trips to see a Broadway musical, the Masters golf tournament and private jet travel to luxury vacation destinations.
• “Medicare beneficiaries are entitled to know with certainty that their physician’s decision-making has not been compromised by a private flight, expensive ski trip, or any other unlawful inducement,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Chad Blumenfield said in the statement.

Dive Insight:

Precision Lens and its owner must pay a total of more than $487 million, not including interest and attorney’s fees, Wilhemina Wright, a U.S. District Judge in Minnesota, ruled in a judgment entered on May 12.

A jury found in February that the company had submitted more than 64,000 false claims to Medicare, causing more than $43 million in damages. Under the False Claims Act, a company can be liable for $5,000 per false claim and triple the amount of damages sustained by the government.

Precision Lens sells products for eye surgery, including intraocular lenses, which are implanted in the eye in cataract procedures. Besides paying...

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