A settlement has been reached in a whistleblower class action lawsuit brought against Saint Joseph Health System Inc who is accused of submitting false claims to the Medicare and Kentucky Medicaid programs for a variety of medically unnecessary cardiac procedures.
The originally filing whistleblowers will receive a $2.46 million share of the government's recovery.
The initial whistleblower case was filed in March of 2011. The government's lawsuit alleges that doctors working at Saint Joseph Hospital performed numerous invasive cardiac procedures, including coronary stents, pacemakers, coronary artery bypass graft surgeries and diagnostic catheterizations, on Medicare and Medicaid patients who did not need them, and that the hospital was aware of these unnecessary procedures. These doctors were affiliated with Cumberland Clinic which is a physician group that entered an exclusive arrangement with Saint Joseph Hospital in 2008 to provide cardiology services to the hospital’s patients. Cumberland Clinic is owned by two London-based cardiologists, Satyabrata Chatterjee and Ashwini Anand. The government complaint makes further allegations that Saint Joseph Hospital violated the federal Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute by entering into sham management agreements that financially benefitted Chatterjee and Anand as an inducement for Chatterjee and Anand to direct more Cumberland Clinic patients to the hospital.
