Michael Drobot, former owner and CEO of Pacific Hospital in Long Beach, Calif., is currently imprisoned for his role in a kickback scheme, and prosecutors say he has now agreed to plead guilty to new charges.

The following hospital lawsuits were reported in the past month, beginning with the most recent.

A nurse has filed a lawsuit claiming she was fired by Women's and Children's Hospital in Columbia, Mo., due to age discrimination, according to The Columbia Missourian.

Essence Group Holdings, a St. Louis-based health plan with 60,000 members in Missouri and Illinois, is facing a whistleblower lawsuit and is under scrutiny due to a recent audit by HHS' Office of Inspector General.

A hospital operating room supervisor threatened to fire an employee who was summoned for jury duty, prompting a North Carolina judge to order the supervisor to appear before him in court July 23, according to The Charlotte Observer.

Mercy Health Fairfield Hospital in Cincinnati quietly paid Neil Armstrong's family $6 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit and avoid publicity after Mr. Armstrong died two weeks after a 2012 heart surgery at the facility, according to The New York Times.

Stuart James, former chief information services operating officer at Sutter Health, claims the Sacramento, Calif.-based health system fired him after he reported management's failure to install backup EHR software that could have aided IT operations during Sutter's computer network outage in May 2018, Sacramento Bee reports. 

A federal appeals court ruled California nursing home residents may continue a lawsuit that accuses the state of not taking enough action to prevent patient dumping, reports The Sacramento Bee.

Brentwood, Tenn.-based Comprehensive Pain Specialists, three of its principal owners, its former CEO and a chiropractor are accused of engaging in a false billing scheme that defrauded Medicare and Tennessee's Medicaid program of $25 million, according to the Department of Justice.

A federal judge ruled July 19 that the Trump administration's expansion of short-term health plans does not undercut the ACA, The Wall Street Journal reports. 

A podiatrist in New York was sentenced to one year and a day in prison July 19 for his role in a healthcare fraud scheme, according to the Department of Justice.

The family of a Utah woman is suing St. Mark's Hospital in Millcreek, Utah, alleging she died after surgery because blood drained from her heart into a garbage can below the operating table, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

From a New York judge upholding a ban on religious exemption to vaccine laws to a Pennsylvania hospital settling False Claims Act allegations, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits and settlements making headlines.

The Department of Justice announced more than $750 million in False Claims Act settlements in the first half of this year, with the bulk of recoveries involving healthcare fraud, according to an analysis by Los Angeles-based law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Responsible Telemedicine, a San Francisco-based consumer watchdog group, filed a lawsuit against WebMD on July 15, citing the digital health company's alleged disregard for patient well-being.

Millcreek Community Hospital in Erie, Pa., has agreed to pay $2.45 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations, according to the Department of Justice.

  The Texas Supreme Court will decide in November if Arlington-based Texas Health Resources was negligent when two of its nurses were infected with Ebola on the job, according to CBS Dallas/Forth Worth.   

A former employee's allegations that Lynchburg, Va.-based Centra Health illegally refused to admit certain juvenile psychiatric patients has prompted probes by regulatory agencies, according to The News & Advance.

Some state aren't properly screening Medicaid providers who are at high risk for fraud, waste and abuse, according to a report from HHS' Office of Inspector General.

A rope resembling a noose that was left on a shared desk at Michigan Medicine's University Hospital in Ann Arbor June 20 was not the result of a hate crime but a practice fishing knot, police investigators found, according to MLive.com.