Hospital Agrees to pay $7 Million in Whistleblower Settlement
Hospital Agrees to pay $7 Million in Whistleblower Settlement
All Children’s Hospital has agreed to pay $7 million to settle a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging it violated anti-kickback laws by paying inflated salaries and bonuses to doctors so that they would bring in more patients and revenues.The suit was filed in July 2011 by Barbara Schubert, who was director of operations for the doctors’ practice at All Children’s for more than a decade. She claimed the hospital overpaid doctors by about $5 million in 2010 alone, violating laws regulating the financial relationships between hospitals and the physicians who bring in patients.
All Children’s, which denied any wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement, relies heavily on the state-federal Medicaid program. In 2010, the year it opened its new facility, 70 percent of its patient care revenues, or $370 million, came from Medicaid, according to an annual report cited in the suit.
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