Joe Carlson of ModernHealthcare.com recently reported on some of the news about the False Claims Act and qui tams that came up at the jointly held annual conference of the American Health Lawyers Association and the Health Care Compliance Association: "Shift Seen in False Claims Whistle-Blower Suits," 10/2/2012.
According to relator counsel and HHS speakers at the conference, relators increasingly are continuing to litigate qui tam suits even when the government declines to intervene.
Dan Anderson, deputy director of Commercial Litigation for DOJ's Civil Division, told the conference that DOJ has been "roundly criticized for taking too long" to make intervention decisions in healthcare cases and that it will now try to make an intervention decision "within nine months."
Anderson went on, reports Carlson, to note that the "hospital industry has reason to be concerned now . . . And there is reason to think there will be an uptick in the number of qui tam cases that are filed . . . We had a record-setting year last year, and this year we are going to blow right past that."
A. Brian Albritton
October 7, 2012
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