FY 2022 FCA Recovery Statistics Show Increase in DOJ and Whistleblower Actions, Which Continue to Target the Healthcare and Life Sciences Industries
On February 7, 2023, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Brian M. Boynton, announced that the Civil Division recovered over $2.2 billion in settlements and judgments under the False Claims Act (“FCA”) for fiscal year 2022. Detailed statistics on FCA recoveries from 1986 through FY 2022 are available here.
DOJ Statistics on FCA Recoveries Through FY 2021 Reveal Continued Focus on Healthcare and More Direct Government Enforcement
On February 1, 2022, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ Civil Division, Brian M. Boynton, announced that the Civil Division recovered over $5.6 billion in settlements and judgments under the False Claims Act (“FCA”) for fiscal year 2021. This is the second largest annual total in FCA history and a significant increase from the $2.2 billion recovered during fiscal year 2020. Detailed statistics on FCA recoveries from 1986 through FY 2021 are available here. (more…)
DOJ Releases Detailed Statistics on FCA Recoveries Through FY 2020
On January 14, 2021, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark of the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the Civil Division recovered over $2.2 billion in settlements and judgments under the False Claims Act (FCA) for fiscal year 2020. This represents a more than $850 million decrease from last year’s figure and a $3.9 billion decrease from the all-time recovery record in 2014. Detailed statistics on FCA cases from 1986 through FY 2020 are available here.
DOJ Announces Over $2.5 Billion in FY 2018 FCA Recoveries From Healthcare Industry
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: (more…)
DOJ Announces Record Number of New FCA Cases, $4.7 Billion in Fraud Recoveries in FY 2016
DOJ recently announced that it recovered over $4.7 billion in settlements and judgments from civil fraud cases in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016. That recovery is significantly higher than the $3.5 billion that DOJ recovered in FY 2015. The FY 2016 amount is the third highest annual fraud recovery ever.
DOJ Reinforces Importance of Early and Material Cooperation In Post-Yates World
In a speech on Tuesday, September 27, 2016, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Bill Baer said that in the post-Yates world companies must provide early and material assistance to DOJ’s efforts to hold companies and individuals accountable for corporate wrongdoing – including by voluntarily disclosing information before they receive a subpoena – if they hope to receive cooperation credit. In doing so, Baer called out those banks caught up in DOJ’s enforcement focus on mortgage-backed securities. Baer claims those companies did not cooperate early enough and that DOJ thus rejected their requests for substantial cooperation credit, ultimately extracting billions of dollars in settlements. Baer thus made clear the importance of early cooperation: “little or no cooperation credit will be afforded in situations where the supposed cooperation occurs after the department has completed the bulk of its investigation.” In addition to cooperating early, companies also must provide specific information about any and all employees involved in wrongdoing and information that is unknown to DOJ and materially assists its investigation in order to obtain meaningful cooperation credit. At the same time, Baer described conduct that will not qualify a company for cooperation credit; specifically, simply producing information in response to a subpoena or CID and making a presentation to DOJ that seeks to limit or eliminate liability will not be viewed as cooperation. Indeed, Baer’s speech raises questions as to whether legitimate efforts to defend conduct under investigation may even disqualify a company that otherwise has been cooperative from receiving cooperation credit.
Baer’s speech can be accessed here.
DOJ Announces Over $3.5 Billion in Fraud Recoveries in FY 2015
DOJ recently announced that it recovered over $3.5 billion in settlements and judgments from civil fraud cases in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015. That recovery falls well short of the $5.69 billion that DOJ recovered in FY 2014, though it is still the fourth-greatest annual fraud recovery ever.
OIG Annual Work Plan Targets Drug Pricing, Data Protection Issues
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) released its Fiscal Year 2016 (“FY2016”) Work Plan. This work plan offers manufacturers and providers insight into OIG’s priorities for the coming year, many of which are consistent with issues that have been raised in False Claims Act lawsuits. A number of OIG’s newly announced programs mirror current topics of intense debate in the healthcare industry, including pricing for brand name prescription drugs and controls over protected health information.
GAO Report Criticizing CMS Suggests Heightened Enforcement Risks for Part D Sponsors
The Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) recently released a report, “Changes Needed to Improve CMS’s Recovery Audit Program Operations and Contractor Oversight,” criticizing CMS for failing to adequately oversee the Part D recovery audit contractor (“RAC”) program. The report reflects growing concern around potential overpayments under the Part D program, mirroring the wave of interest that first arose several years ago regarding potential overpayments under the Medicare Advantage (“MA”) Program. For a time, the MA program operated relatively unscathed by the groundswell of qui tam suits in the healthcare industry, but it is now in the midst of a widespread industry enforcement wave, and a number of plans and providers are facing FCA suits (as discussed here). The GAO’s report could portend more Part D Sponsors being future targets of similar scrutiny.
OIG Issues Publications Emphasizing Kickback Risks of Manufacturer-Sponsored Coupons for Part D Drugs
On September 19, the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (OIG) issued a controversial report entitled Manufacturer Safeguards May Not Prevent Copayment Coupon Use for Part D Drugs, along with a companion Special Advisory Bulletin. The Report describes an OIG survey of pharmaceutical manufacturers’ use of copayment coupons and analyzes the safeguards manufacturers implement to guard against the use of coupons for drugs paid for by Medicare Part D beneficiaries. Each of the manufacturers surveyed provided notices to beneficiaries and/or pharmacies stating that their coupon and co-payment programs are invalid for use by Federal healthcare program beneficiaries. Nevertheless, OIG takes the position that failure to implement effective safeguards for compliance with eligibility requirements and other terms and conditions may be taken by the agency as reflecting an intent to use coupons to induce federally funded purchase of drugs in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute and other fraud and abuse laws. These publications reflect another example of OIG’s emphasis on transparency as a way to reduce what it considers a source of fraud and abuse. However, OIG offers no concrete suggestions about how such a system might operate or be operationalized. In the meantime, these developments highlight certain AKS (and attendant FCA) risks that Part D plan sponsors, manufacturers, and participating pharmacies face.