On May 25, 2023, U.S. District Judge R. Stan Baker denied motions to dismiss a False Claims Act (“FCA”) suit brought by two whistleblowers over an alleged medical kickback scheme. The whistleblowers filed a qui tam suit in the Southern District of Georgia in 2018, which was unsealed in 2020 after the federal government and state of Georgia declined to intervene.
The complaint alleges that Genesis Vascular of Pooler, LLC (“Genesis”), a healthcare center, paid various medical providers kickbacks to get referrals for millions of dollars’ worth of medically unnecessary vascular procedures that were billed to Medicare and Medicaid. These included vascular procedures that were allegedly not indicated by the patients’ medical histories or the severity of the patients’ symptoms.
The defendants, who include two Genesis executives and multiple physicians, challenged the complaint’s “collective pleading style,” arguing that the complaint lacked the necessary specificity concerning each individual defendant’s alleged conduct because each claim was brought against all defendants collectively. The court disagreed, explaining that “[i]t is permissible to plead against all defendants collectively, so long as it is clearly alleged how each of them is liable under that count. . . . Relators have sufficiently put defendants on notice of their alleged individual conduct in the fraudulent scheme.”
The suit is U.S. et al. v. Genesis Global Healthcare et al., Case No. 4:18-cv-00128, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.
The attorneys at Chilivis Grubman represent healthcare providers in connection with False Claims Act and Anti-Kickback litigation. If you need assistance with such a matter, please contact us today.