Legal & Regulatory Issues

Drea Lynne Gibson of Fall City, Wash. was recently sentenced in a Seattle U.S. District Court to a year and a day in prison and three years of supervised release for product tampering in violation of federal law while she…

Charlene Frizzera, acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, recently discussed the top three sectors for Medicare fraud and the agency's plans and goals for combating fraud in a letter to Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), following "repeated…

Here are five recent cases involving Medicare fraud and kickbacks or other inducements to healthcare providers or Medicare beneficiaries for their involvement in the fraud schemes.

Sukhdarshan S. Bedi, MD, of Energy, Ill., and his three healthcare clinics pleaded guilty to various charges related to illegally distributing controlled substances, according to a news release from the United States District Court in Benton, Ill.

As the full House of Representatives readies for a vote on the House Democrats' health reform bill — perhaps as early as Saturday — a small exception has been added to the section in the bill that would severely restrict…

Ron DeVito, CFO of Hoboken University Medical Center, has resigned, after an audit revealed poor financial practices resulting in accounting overstatements, according to a report from the Hudson Reporter.

Six Massachusetts hospitals with high proportions of government funding are considering filing a lawsuit to force the state to pay the full Medicaid funding that they were expecting, according to a report by the Eagle-Tribune.

Covington, Ky.-based Omnicare, the nation's largest nursing home pharmacy, will pay $98 million, and IVAX Pharmaceuticals of Weston, Fla., a drug manufacturer, will pay $14 million to settle false claims allegations, which allege the companies engaged in a kickback scheme,…

CMS is going ahead with plans to slash Medicare physician reimbursements by 21.2 percent next year, following a requirement to put reimbursements in line with a sustainable growth rate formula, according to a final rule issued by CMS.

Due to a request from Congress, the Federal Trade Commission is delaying enforcement of the Red Flags Rule until June 1, 2010, for financial institutions and creditors subject to enforcement by the FTC, according to an FTC news release.