The federal government is suing Dallas-based Steward Health Care and its facilities, Steward Medical Group and Boston-based St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, for violating the False Claims Act and a physician self-referral law, according to a Monday announcement.
The complaint, filed in Massachusetts District Court, alleges Steward Medical Group improperly linked a lead cardiologist's compensation with his referrals, leading the group to award him nearly $5 million in incentive-based pay — and violating physician self-referral rules, known as the Stark Law.
St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, which employed the cardiologist, is also accused of submitting over 1,000 claims for referred services to Medicare worth tens of millions of dollars, despite knowing the claims were not eligible for payment.
In the announcement, acting U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Joshua Levy said that Steward Health took illegal actions to increase cardiac operations at its facilities. Steward is one of the nation’s largest private health systems, with 33 hospitals in its nine-state portfolio.
The complaint alleges that the system ran afoul of the Stark Law and, in turn, the False Claims Act by pairing the chief cardiac surgeon’s compensation with referrals and billing referred patients’ claims to Medicare.
Congress enacted the Stark Law in 1989 to protect Medicare patients from being impacted by their physicians’ financial relationships. The law prohibits hospitals from...
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...