Stories about physicians and other healthcare professionals involved in lawsuits—as either a plaintiff or a defendant—or accused of breaking the law. Various legal updates or unusual stories in the news may land here.
In its complaint, Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare said it cleared an unnamed female patient for discharge on Oct. 6, 2025. Despite setting her up with transportation and coordinating with family, she refused to leave.
The U.S. Department of Justice said the insurer upcoded patient diagnoses to boost risk-adjusted payments it received from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The company did not admit to wrongdoing, despite agreeing to the payout.
The company confirmed the number of victims in filings with the federal government and the state of Maine. The data breach was discovered in October 2025, but it began in November 2024. Hackers were siphoning protected health information for roughly a year.
A team of legal and medical experts conducted a mock trial that entailed a series of hypothetical cases involving AI, sharing their findings in Nature Health.
The company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it is cooperating with the Department of Justice’s inquiry into possible incidents of Medicare Advantage upcoding.
In a settled lawsuit, a surgeon and anesthesiologist admitted to playing the game and missing an alarm that warned them a 56-year-old patient had stopped breathing.
A California health system and a local morgue are facing accusations of gross negligence after the bodies of missing persons were discovered—some with identification still on them. The state Department of Public Health is investigating the incidents.
The insurer is challenging three phone calls made by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that led to a docked rating for some of Humana’s plans. A previous challenge, which broadly contested the agency’s star rating criteria, was dismissed.
Ritesh Kalra, MD, allegedly wrote 31,000 opioid prescriptions between 2019 and 2025, many of which were illegitimate. He is accused of inappropriately touching patients in exchange for oxycodone scripts as part of a five-count criminal indictment.
Former Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre, MD, and other executives are accused in a $1.4 billion legal filing of paying themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses, despite the health system being insolvent.