Blog
Two St. Joseph County hospitals accused of false claims
Two South Bend attorneys have filed a claim against 62 Indiana hospitals and their parent company, CIOX Health, for systematically falsifying records and defrauding taxpayers of more than $300 million. The federal lawsuit alleges the hospitals made false claims to receive federal grant dollars and participated in kickback schemes by over-billing for the release of electronic medical records.
Michael Misch and Bradley Colborn, attorneys for South Bend law firm Anderson, Agostino & Keller, brought the suit in Sept. 2016 on behalf of the United States and the state of Indiana after experiencing difficulties in obtaining electronic medical records from local hospitals in their work on personal injury and medical malpractice cases. The attorneys noticed that the same hospitals they were having trouble getting medical records from, were receiving grants from the federal government.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 created grant programs to encourage hospitals to implement new electronic health record systems and comply with medical record requests. In order to receive the grants, hospitals had to release information that showed the number of medical records requested annually and if the records were turned over to those requesting them within the prescribed three business days. Hospitals that failed to achieve at least 50 percent of their requests within the time frame would not be eligible to receive funding.
Also, According to Misch and Colborn, CIOX Health was violating federal law by “routinely and repeatedly” overbilling patients for their own medical records and allowed for a third-party company to profit from the release of patients’ electronic medical records.