On August 24, 2016, Judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District of New York approved a settlement in which Mount Sinai Health System (Mount Sinai) will pay $2.95 million to New York and the federal government to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act (FCA) by withholding Medicare and Medicaid overpayments in contravention of the 60-day overpayments provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The provision creates FCA liability for healthcare providers that identify overpayments but fail to return them within 60 days, and the Mount Sinai settlement is the first one that specifically resolves allegations of violations of the provision.
The settlement stems from the qui tam action Kane v. Healthfirst, Inc., No. 1:11-cv-02325-ER, in which it was alleged that employee Robert Kane alerted Continuum Health Partners, Inc. (now a part of Mount Sinai) to hundreds of potential overpayments, and, instead of pursuing the refund of overpayments, Continuum fired Kane and delayed further inquiry. Last year, as we discussed in a previous post, Judge Ramos denied Mount Sinai’s motion to dismiss and provided first-of-its-kind guidance on what it means to “identify” an overpayment and start the 60-day clock created by the ACA. He opined that a provider has identified an overpayment if it has been “put on notice” that a certain claim may have been overpaid. In February of this year, CMS released its final 60-day overpayment rule, largely adopting the same interpretation of “knowledge” and “identified” that Judge Ramos used.
Although the Kane court did not hold that the “mere existence” of an obligation under the ACA established an FCA violation, the 60-day period in the statute clearly carries a heightened risk of potential liability for providers that fail to carry out compliance activities or undertake an investigation once they have been given credible evidence of the existence of overpayments. The settlement further signals to providers the importance of taking any allegation related to overpayments seriously, and to take swift action in order to be ready for the start of the 60-day clock deadline for returning any overpayments.