DOJ recently announced that it recovered over $2.8 billion from FCA cases in FY 2018. Although this number continues a multi-year downtrend in overall FCA recoveries, healthcare fraud remains a major DOJ focus, with $2.5 billion of the recoveries – 87.25%, the highest proportion in at least the past decade – coming from healthcare cases:
This $2.5 billion was extracted from various segments of the healthcare industry, including through major settlements with pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, hospitals, a physician association, and a wholesaler. That sum is the fifth largest annual healthcare recovery ever and second largest in the past five years. Of the $2.5 billion, $568 million was recovered in non qui tam actions, the second highest annual sum of healthcare recoveries ever from original actions.
In addition to emphasizing healthcare recoveries, DOJ’s press release also highlighted actions against individuals, including a $114 million kickback judgment against three individual defendants and a separate $5.5 million kickback judgment against two individuals and their professional corporations.
DOJ’s announcement can be found here.
