Thompson v. LifePoint Hosps., Inc (Summary)

FALSE CLAIMS ACT/ANTI-KICKBACK STATUTE

Thompson v. LifePoint Hosps., Inc., No. 11-01771 (W.D. La. Nov. 8, 2013)

The United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted a motion to dismiss filed by a physician and two hospitals in response to another physician’s complaint alleging False Claims Act (“FCA”) violations.  The court granted the motion, holding that the physician’s complaint failed to plead with particularity the alleged fraudulent conduct underlying the FCA claims.

In his complaint, the physician alleged that the hospitals violated the Medicare swing-bed requirements by not having a qualified therapeutic recreation specialist on staff and violated the Anti-Kickback Statute by providing a non-employee physician an apartment owned by the hospital at less than fair market rent.  His complaint also alleged that the physician defendant was performing unnecessary upper endoscopies.  However, the physician only made general allegations that the defendants submitted false claims to the government.

In granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss, the court found that the physician failed to plead his claims with sufficient particularity when he failed to, among other things, “identify a single claim that was actually submitted pursuant to the allegedly fraudulent schemes….”  The court also rejected the defendant physician’s motion for attorneys’ fees, finding that his unsupported contentions that the plaintiff physician was “mad that the Hospital sought to enforce [his] loan repayment obligations…agreed to in [his] Recruitment Agreement” did not establish that the suit was “clearly frivolous, clearly vexatious, or brought primarily for the purposes of harassment.”