$7.2 million paid To Resolve Kickback And False Claims Allegations: The U.S. Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced on April 13, 2022 that Care Plus Management, LLC (“Care Plus”), which was created by Paul D. Weir (“Weir”) and John R. Morgan, M.D. (“Morgan”), along with 18 anesthesia entities that Care Plus owned and operated, agreed to pay $7.2 million to resolve allegations that they entered into kickback arrangements with referring physicians in exchange for the referral of the physicians’ patients for anesthesia services. Specifically, it was alleged that Weir and Morgan, through Care Plus, shared the revenue received for anesthesia services with the referring physicians, and provided subsidies for drugs, supplies and equipment to the referring physicians’ outpatient surgical centers.

The Government alleged that between 2012 and 2016, Weir and Morgan, through Care Plus, induced the physician owners of outpatient surgery centers to award these exclusive services agreements to them by offering them a partial ownership in the anesthesia entities that Care Plus had created to service their surgery centers. Under this arrangement, the physician owners received compensation in the form of a portion of the revenue from the anesthesia services.

The Government further alleged that during this same period, Weir, Morgan, Care Plus and its anesthesia companies subsidized the cost incurred by surgery centers for drugs, supplies and equipment in order to induce the physician owners of those centers to grant exclusive anesthesia services agreements to Care Plus’s anesthesia companies. HHS-OIG has longstanding concerns about the provision of free or below-fair-market-value goods or services to an existing or potential referral source because free or below-fair-market-value goods or services may be used as a vehicle to disguise or confer an unlawful payment for referrals of Federal health care program business.

The Government alleged that these arrangements violated the Anti-Kickback Statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b(b), and caused the submission of false claims in violation of the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3729, et seq.

The settlement resolves a lawsuit originally filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by Robert Douglas (the Relator) under the qui tam or whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act.  United States ex rel. Douglas, et al. v. Care Plus Management, LLC, et al., No. 1:16-cv-4439-WMR. Under the False Claims Act, private citizens may bring suit for false claims on behalf of the United States and share in any recovery obtained by the government. The Relator has received over $1.3 million from the settlement.

If you have information regarding false claims having been submitted to Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, other federal health care programs, or to other federal agencies/programs, and the information is not publicly known and no actions have been taken by the government with regard to recovering the false claims, you should promptly consult with a False Claims Act attorney (also known as qui tam attorneys) in your U.S. state who may investigate the basis of your False Claims Act allegations and who may also assist you in bringing a qui tam lawsuit on behalf of the United States, if appropriate, for which you may be entitled to receive a portion of the recovery received by the U.S. government.

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