By Zack Buck
After more than four years of investigation, and 70 separate agreements, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced news Friday of a massive $257 million settlement, covering a record-breaking 457 hospitals, for the alleged fraudulent placement of implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) between 2003-2010. I have previously written about the twists and turns of this particular nationwide investigation—the most prominent example of the medical necessity-based health care fraud investigations—here, here, and here.
Why ICDs initially caught the attention of the DOJ seemed to be the fact that ICDs are highly expensive—costing Medicare about $25,000 per implantation—and, following a whistleblower’s lawsuit in 2008, the DOJ commenced a review of “thousands” of ICD placements nationwide. As I have written about before, hospitals across the country—including renowned hospitals such as the Cleveland Clinic—were included in the initial review, but not all of ended up on the settlement list (a full list of settling hospitals is available here).
Although the full details of the settlement have not yet been made public, there seems to have been a difference between all of the hospitals that placed ICDs outside of Medicare’s timing guidelines and those that the DOJ felt were particularly egregious (apparently less than half of the hospitals on the original investigation list ended up as part of this settlement). This is important because it may indicate a difference—in the DOJ’s thinking—between Medicare’s coverage standard, and its “medical necessity” standard for purposes of fraud enforcement.
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