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.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the judgment, which was issued against two facilities in Pennsylvania. The nursing homes fraudulently billed Medicare and Medicaid for working hours despite staff not being on the floor.
In court documents, an unnamed Minnesota woman said that in 2022, she was admitted to an Allina Health hospital and scheduled for the removal of her infected spleen, only for an error to result in her left kidney being removed instead.
Community Health System and Physician Network Advantage, an affiliated technology consultancy firm, were accused of bribing physicians for patient referrals in the form of paid vacations, expensive gifts and business meetings held at strip clubs.
The company told Cardiovascular Business it respectfully disagrees with the jury's decision and is evaluating all possible legal options going forward. The Association of Medical Device Reprocessors, meanwhile, celebrated the news.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reports that UnitedHealth Group is being investigated for criminal fraud, likely stemming from its Medicare Advantage billing practices.
The health system allegedly ended an ongoing contract with little notice, leaving clinicians and patients without the services of a cardiovascular surgery program.
Neurosurgeon Payam Toobian, MD, oversaw a scam in which two physicians would receive gift cards and cash in exchange for referrals to his imaging center.
Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., is crying foul over the damages a jury ordered it to pay Maya Kowalski and her family earlier this month.
A nurse punctured the 68-year-old patient's lung with a feeding tube in 2018, and radiologist Louis Jacobs, MD, subsequently failed to spot the injury on X-ray.