Claire Beniga, Author at Keller Grover

Five Ways Hospice Providers Use Terminally Ill Patients to Rip Off Taxpayers

Hospice care is the provision of specialized palliative treatment for terminally ill patients, focused not on curing them but making their last days as comfortable as possible. Hospice has gone from a grassroots movement on the outskirts of the U.S. medical establishment to a massive, multibillion-dollar industry. And as it has come of age, it has increasingly attracted the same type of fraud, waste, and abuse that plagues U.S. healthcare at large. Hospice treatment has been covered by … [Read more...]

Attorney General Nominee Affirms Commitment to Fighting Fraud

In confirmation hearings this week, the Trump administration's nominee for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, vowed this week that he would use his position as America's "top cop" to continue to fight fraud against taxpayers. "[T]his government must improve its ability to protect the United States Treasury from waste, fraud, and abuse," Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday. "We cannot afford to lose a single dollar to corruption and you can be sure that if I am confirmed, I will … [Read more...]

Quest Diagnostics

Keller Grover LLP is investigating a medical data breach involving Quest Diagnostics. According to a data breach notification recently sent to affected patients, an unauthorized third party accessed the MyQuest by Care360® internet application and obtained Protected Health Information, including names, dates of birth and lab results. Negligent release and disclosure of personal and medical information is unlawful under certain circumstances in California. If you have been affected by a … [Read more...]

Whistleblowers Stop Nursing Home Fraud and Patient Harm – With help from the False Claims Act

Healthcare fraud puts patients’ lives at risk and costs billions of dollars every year. Nursing homes, which house vulnerable patients away from loved ones and the outside world, are especially fertile breeding grounds for healthcare fraud schemes. While government agencies have stepped up their enforcement efforts, nursing home workers who witness fraud are in the best position to put it to a stop—and thanks to federal and state whistleblower laws like the False Claims Act, a single principled … [Read more...]

Court embraces use of statistics to hold massive healthcare providers accountable

Healthcare fraud costs Americans as much as $300 billion a year. But uncovering fraud in a healthcare system as sprawling and complex as ours—Medicare alone processes over 1 billion claims annually from over 1 million providers—is like digging for needles in a breathtakingly huge haystack. That's why the federal government relies heavily on the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions to encourage ordinary people to blow the whistle on fraud by filing private civil lawsuits. False Claims Act … [Read more...]