A "Bag of Money," but Executive Says Don't "Give Me Any of that Ethics Cr*p" - DaVita's Latest Settlement for $400 Million

A striking story of a large recent legal settlement, with reminders of previous related settlements, quietly slipped out in the midst of the ruckus about the Ebola virus.A $400 Million Settlement The basics were in a news release by the US Department of Justice.DaVita Healthcare Partners, Inc., one of the leading providers of dialysis services in the United States, has agreed to pay $350 million to resolve claims that it violated the False Claims Act by paying kickbacks to induce the referral of patients to its dialysis clinics,...This amount was augmented by  a Civil Forfeiture in the amount of $39 million based upon conduct related to two specific joint venture transactions entered into in Denver, Colorado. Also, according to Ed Silverman writing on PharmaLot, it was further augmented thus DaVita, by the way, has agreed in principle to pay another $11 million to several states that filed false claims charges, according to a document that DaVita filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The DaVita spokesman says the deal involves five states.So the total cost to the company seems to be about $400 million.   The settlement also  included a corporate integrity agreement,  DaVita has entered into a Corporate Integrity Agreement with the Office of Counsel to the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services which requires it to unwind some of its business arrangements and restructure others, and includes the appointme...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: corporate integrity agreements crime DaVita deception dialysis providers fraud health care corruption kickbacks legal settlements restraint of competition Source Type: blogs