On April 15, 2020, the Department of Justice announced a $41 million settlement of a qui tam lawsuit that Lowey was “first to file” in August 2016. The False Claims Act suit alleged that Defendants Logan Laboratories, LLC, and Tampa Pain Relief Centers, Inc., subsidiaries of Surgery Partners, billed federal health programs (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare) for medically unnecessary urine drug testing from 2010 – 2017. Lowey represented 4 whistleblowers who alleged that the Defendants established a profit making policy of automatically ordering screening and confirmation testing for all patients at every visit, without individualized determinations from treating physicians that the testing was medically reasonable or necessary. This unnecessary testing increased the government’s medical costs without serving patients’ real medical needs.
Tampa Pain and Logan Labs will pay the United States and 5 individual states $40 million, plus interest. Two former executives of the Defendants, Michael T. Doyle and Christopher Utz Toepke, will each pay $500,000, plus interest.
In recognition of their efforts in bringing and litigating this action, the Department of Justice will pay Lowey’s whistleblower clients (along with two other whistleblowers in a related case) approximately $7.79 million. The Department of Justice’s press release on the matter can be found here. https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/reference-laboratory-pain-clinic-and-two-individuals-agree-pay-41-million-resolve.
Please contact Uriel Rabinovitz (urabinovitz@lowey.com) with any questions.
You can learn more about Lowey’s Whistleblower/qui tam practice here: https://lowey.com/whistleblower/.