CHICAGO, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- IPC The Hospitalist Co. Inc. of California is accused in a lawsuit of submitting false claims to federal healthcare programs, prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors say they are intervening, or taking over, a 2009 lawsuit unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court in Chicago that alleges IPC violated state and federal False Claims Acts by "knowingly engaging in systematic overbilling for hospital evaluation and management services billed to Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health benefit programs," the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Justice Department announced Monday.
IPC , one of the nation's largest providers of hospitalist services, employs physicians and other healthcare providers who work in more than 1,300 facilities in 28 states, prosecutors said.
The lawsuit alleges IPC encouraged its physicians to bill at the highest levels regardless of the level of service provided, trained physicians to use higher level codes and encouraged physicians with lower billing levels to "catch up" to their peers, the Justice Department said in a release..
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"We continue to be vigilant in our enforcement efforts to ensure that healthcare programs funded by the taxpayers pay only for appropriate costs," Stuart F. Delery, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Civil Division, said in a statement.
The lawsuit was filed under seal in 2009 by Dr. Bijan Oughatiyan of Dallas, a former hospitalist in San Antonio, who alleges more than half of IPC's revenues -- more than $125 million in 2008 alone -- came from government medical insurers, including Medicare and Medicaid.
Whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act allow the government to take over the lawsuit and to recover three times its damages plus civil penalties, prosecutors said.
The case was ordered unsealed last week by Chief U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo, who also granted the government's request for 120 days to file its own complaint against the company.
