Hospitals Settle for Inpatient Rather Than Outpatient Surgery

"Whistle while you work, and cheerfully together we can tidy up the place, so hum a merry tune it won't take long when there's a song to help you set the pace."

On May 17th, 2010 it was reported that a whistleblower lawsuit that sparked a DOJ investigation into the Medicare billing of hospitals for kyphoplasty has resulted in the government recouping $20 million from eighteen hospitals.

The hospitals that recently settled the whistleblowers complaint included;

St. Francis Hospital, Beech Grove, Indiana $3.16 million

Deaconess Hospital, Evansville, Indiana $2.1 million

St. Vincent's East, Birmingham, Alabama $1.46 million

St. John's Hospital System, Anderson, Indian $826,256

St. Vincent's Birmingham Hospital, Birmingham, Alabama $422,748

Providence Hospital, Mobile, Alabama $381,713

In April three Health East Hospitals in the St. Paul, Minnesota area paid the federal government a total of $2.28 million to settle the whistleblower allegations. Medtronic Spine LLC paid $75 million in 2008 to settle a qui tam lawsuit brought by the same whistleblowers. Medtronic had acquired Kyphon which developed and sold the equipment and materials used to perform kyphoplasty and promoted the procedure as a money maker for the hospitals if they billed Medicare for inpatient rather than outpatient surgery.

The "Relators" aka Whistleblowers are entitled to 15-25% of what is recovered. Hopefully, Mssrs. Patrick and Bates can eventually ride off into the sunset hopefully to relieve themselves of the stench that is left over from their affiliation with the Evil Empire.