Following an 8-0 unanimous decision from the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of the plaintiff, Greene LLP resolved a False Claims Act claim in North Carolina for $6.5 million in July 2017. The case, United States ex rel. Mark McGuire v. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority, et al., was filed in federal court in the Western District of North Carolina, Case No. 3:15-cv-147.
The plaintiff was Mark McGuire, a former laboratory director with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority, Inc., a chain of North Carolina hospitals doing business as Carolinas Healthcare System (CHS). In addition to Greene LLP, McGuire was also represented by lawyers from Comerford & Britt, LLP.
While employed by CHS, McGuire oversaw all of the operations of its laboratory, and protested against billing practices that resulted in false claims for payment to the government. Under the federal False Claims Act, McGuire filed a lawsuit on behalf of the federal and North Carolina governments, alleging that upcoding at CHS resulted in thousands of falsely inflated claims to Medicare and Medicaid. Upcoding is fraudulent medical billing in which a provider bills the payer using a code for a more expensive service than was performed. The $6.5 million settlement reached by the United States with CHS resolves McGuire’s allegations that CHS upcoded when submitting claims for urine drug testing services.
“This case is a great example of how the False Claims Act can get things done when other methods do not,” said Thomas M. Greene of Greene LLP, who along with Michael Tabb and Tucker Greene represented McGuire in the lawsuit.
For more about the case and its results, visit here.