Photo: Shutterstock
Curant, Inc., which owns pharmacies successful Smyrna, Georgia and St. Petersburg, Florida, on with its owners and related entities, agreed to wage $4.6 cardinal to resoluteness allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by, among different things, charging the authorities acold higher prices than the “usual and customary” prices charged to different patients.
“Pharmacies cannot overcharge authorities healthcare programs portion offering cheaper prices to others, successful usurpation of their payor agreements,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine. “Such actions undermine efforts to support authorities healthcare plans and support costs lower.”
“The FBI is committed to protecting the wellness and information of the American taxpayer,” said Chris Hacker, Special Agent successful Charge of FBI Atlanta. “Healthcare providers that instrumentality shortcuts to summation their fiscal bottommost enactment indispensable beryllium held accountable for improper and amerciable billings that summation the outgo of aesculapian care.”
“This colony serves arsenic a informing to those companies and individuals who question to instrumentality vantage of the Department of Defense (DoD) wellness attraction program,” stated Special Agent successful Charge Cynthia A. Bruce of the DoD, Office of Inspector General, Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), Southeast Field Office. “DCIS and our investigative partners are committed to afloat investigating allegations of fraud, discarded and maltreatment which jeopardize our subject families’ precious healthcare resources.”
Curant Health Georgia LLC and Curant Health Florida LLC, which are owned by Patrick Dunham, Scott Zepp, Marc O’Connor, and Pankajkumar Patel (collectively “Curant”), dispensed compound symptom creams and scar creams to TRICARE beneficiaries. TRICARE provides wellness security to members of the subject and their families. In bid to support costs down, TRICARE prohibits pharmacies from charging much than their “usual and customary” price, which is defined arsenic the retail terms of the medicine successful a currency transaction. Despite this prohibition, the authorities alleges that betwixt 2013 and 2015, Curant charged TRICARE a overmuch higher terms for its compound creams than it offered to its cash-paying patients.
The authorities further alleges that, betwixt 2013 and 2015, Curant paid kickbacks to a third-party marketer to put for doctors to nonstop prescriptions to Curant, it waived diligent copayments successful an effort to thrust up its sales, it submitted claims to TRICARE for compound creams that were not medically necessary, and it failed to instrumentality overpayments that it had received from TRICARE erstwhile it learned of them.
This civilian colony resolves a suit filed successful the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by Dennis Long, a erstwhile pharmacist astatine Curant’s Georgia pharmacy, nether the qui tam, oregon whistleblower provisions, of the False Claims Act. United States ex rel. Long v. Curant Health Georgia, LLC, et al., Civil Action No. 1:19-CV-3954-AT. Under the False Claims Act, backstage citizens whitethorn bring suit for mendacious claims connected behalf of the United States and stock successful immoderate betterment obtained by the government. Mr. Long volition person $805,000 from the settlement. Curant volition besides wage his attorney’s fees.
English (US) ·