Health Care/Pharmaceutical False Claims, Whistleblower and Compliance Developments Update

During the past five years there have been very dramatic increases in Federal False Claims Act and whistleblower litigation, whether measured by numbers and size of claims, size of settlements or size of judgments. For example, in the last fiscal year, there were $4.9 billion recoveries, of which $439 million went to whistleblowers who initiated such claims (known as qui tam plaintiffs). These dramatic increases were primarily due to a rapid escalation of False Claims cases in the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

False claims can arise from Medicare and Medicaid over billing, false certifications, Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute violations and pharmaceutical marketing, off label and pricing issues. Practitioners should be aware that the Courts have recognized specific defenses to such claims. In addition, there are important compliance, remediation and data management issues.

The False Claims Act also provides protections to whistleblowers arising from retaliatory discharge. There are also many other state statutes with built in whistleblower protections. There are also other common law whistleblower and tort claims, such as defamation, wrongful termination in violation of public policy, and breach of contract.

In this national webinar, our experienced false claims act and whistleblower attorneys will cover recent developments involving the health care and pharmaceutical industries that should be of great interest to executives, managers, in house counsel, human resources executives, compliance personnel and internal auditors, including the following:

• False Claims Act Litigation involving the Stark Law, Anti-Kickback Statute, Fraudulent Billing and Pharmaceutical Marketing and Pricing Issue
• False Claims Act Defenses and Strategy
• Whistleblower Retaliatory Discharge Claims Under the False Claims Act and State Laws
• Pre-litigation in-house response to whistleblower complaints
• Addressing whistleblower issues as part of your compliance program
• How to remediate Stark Law, Anti-Kickback Statute, Fraudulent Billing and Marketing and Pricing Violations
• Data management and use of technology in federal cases involving false claims