Nolan Auerbach & White is an experienced Hospital Fraud Law Firm helping courageous whistleblowers.
Extensive federal and state laws regulate organ and tissue donation and transplantation. These many regulations were promulgated to address a variety of issues, including the medical, legal, and moral issues involved in organ donation and transplantation. One of the main issues deals with the enormous demand for human organs in a context where there is an inadequate supply of usable organs. These laws are generally viewed by lawmakers, members of the medical professions, and by the populace as a way to ensure the most equitable distribution of organs.
Organ Acquisition Cost Centers (OACC) were developed by HHS to facilitate billing and to defray evaluative services conducted in Clinics for prospective living transplant donors and/or recipients. While Part A and B costs related to the final transplantation surgery and medical follow up had been covered under separate prospective payment arrangements, the Clinic evaluative overhead costs were not previously reimbursable at a level which captured the full expenses incurred.
Transplantation is the most complex of cost reports, since there are three components: physician services (evaluative, medical care, and surgical care), hospital services related to the transplant procedure and any related complications, and organ acquisition costs (OACs). OACs are complex, subject to some variability in interpretation, are defined by specific regulations, and are auditable by the Office of Inspector General. OACs include 1) Final organ procurement costs, including surgery and 2) Organ Acquisition Cost Center (OACC) pre-operative costs, to include: Costs of maintaining waiting lists; all costs of evaluating prospective donors and recipients at a site, including immunological testing; physician services pursuant to these services, not classifiable as direct medical care; salaries and benefits of all ancillary nursing, social work, and technical staff; indirect facility costs, including rent, computers, and supplies.
Whistleblower exposure of Medicare Fraud in transplant centers include the following:
Kathleen Hawkins, RN MSN, had been employed by Defendant, Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) for approximately 6 years when she decided she had had enough of trying to change the hospital system from within.
CHW, a California not-for-profit corporation that operated hospitals in California, Arizona, and Nevada, was at the time the eighth largest hospital system in the nation and the largest not-for-profit hospital provider in California.
Joe Strom contacted us in 2005. We were very grateful that he did. We immediately formed an all-star legal team and a process to stop a very harmful pharmaceutical marketing strategy. It was this process we set into motion that ultimately returned hundreds of millions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury, and a portion of that, very well-deserved, into Joe’s bank account.
Joe told us a very troubling story about the off-label promotion of a pharmaceutical drug for patients who already suffered from chronic heart failure.
Bruce Moilan was a seasoned hospital systems expert by the time he contacted our Firm. At the time he decided to file his qui tam lawsuit, he was employed by South Texas Health System as a System Director for Materials Management. In this position, he oversaw $24 million in annual purchases of supplies and equipment and helped determine budget, reduction and cost analysis throughout the contract bidding and negotiations process. His job was to insure proper implementation for purchasing, receiving and management of inventory, for McAllen Hospitals, L.P.
