Stories about physicians and other healthcare professionals involved in lawsuits—as either a plaintiff or a defendant—or accused of breaking the law. Various legal updates or unusual stories in the news may land here.
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It’s unclear if the man taken into custody, Edward Dubrovsky, 54, is being formally accused of being linked to the infamous cybercrime cell. Dubrovsky works with ransomware victims, helping them to pay off criminals to regain access to their data.
Physical therapist Jaekwan Lee, 42, will serve 15 months in prison for his role in the fraud scheme, which involved dozens of Amtrak employees, 19 of whom pleaded guilty for their role in the conspiracy.
The state is accusing the insurer of colluding with the broader Blue Cross Blue Shield network to stifle competition and control prices. BCBSM denies the allegations.
A patient of Huntsville Hospital Health System says the hospital was negligent when it failed to protect patient data that was taken by hackers during a breach on a legacy Cerner EHR system. The hospital said the EHR vendor is ultimately responsible.
The Office of Inspector General said a "leadership failure and poor decision making" in the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in New York has left it unable to properly fulfill its mission to "protect patients from abuse and neglect."
Hospitals are not the only healthcare entities competing over a limited pool of qualified compliance officers. Payers, vendors and others are in the race too. But hospitals and health systems may have the most to lose if they let down their guard on adherence to regulatory rules.
The owners of a local pharmacy in Mississippi have been ordered to pay back the money they stole from Medicare and Medicaid by billing for expensive prescriptions they never dispensed to patients.
An emergency department nurse at Heritage Valley Sewickley Hospital is accused of stealing drugs and neglecting patients, causing at least two fatalities. A lawsuit filed by two whistleblowers further alleges that hospital leadership covered for the drug-dependent nurse.
Led by Massachusetts and California, the plaintiffs say CMS ignored the will of Congress by strictly defining a “medically frail” exemption that would allow a person access to safety net medical coverage.
Reese Jackson, the former president and CEO of Chesapeake Regional Healthcare was unceremoniously dismissed from his role on June 1. Jackson has been named as a defendant in a pending class-action lawsuit filed by 900 women.
The state’s Supreme Court restored the judgment, agreeing that John Farmer, Jr., MD, was branded with a “proverbial scarlet letter” after the complaint, which spiraled out of control and damaged his career.
