Novartis, a pharmaceutical company, agreed to a $678 million healthcare settlement with the Department of Justice (DOJ). Novartis was accused of violating the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) and False Claims Act (FCA) by having healthcare providers attend and speak at events to entice providers to prescribe Novartis to their patients. The details of the healthcare settlement are discussed below. What Did Novartis Do [...]
A former University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) employee was indicted by a federal grand jury for criminal HIPAA violations. The Pittsburgh federal grand jury charged the former patient information coordinator with six counts of wrongfully obtaining and disclosing protected health information (PHI). HIPAA regulation defines PHI as any demographic information that can be used to identify a patient. The UPMC employee used her position [...]
Martin Army Community Hospital has begun notifying patients of a potential HIPAA breach. The hospital, located in Fort Benning on the border of Georgia and Alabama, revealed that a potential breach had transpired between January 2011 and December 2013. A Rouge Employee Hospital officials discovered the breach after they were notified of criminal activity by an employee working in the laboratory shipping section. The employee's [...]
A former respiratory therapist was convicted of wrongly accessing individually identifiable health information by a federal jury on June 23 of this year. The charges claimed that the therapist was using the information to seek, obtain, or use intravenous drugs. The therapist, Jamie Knapp, age 26, was employed at ProMedica Bay Park Hospital in Oregon, Ohio. Prosecutors allege that Knapp had been wrongfully accessing patients' protected health information [...]
A former pharmaceutical district manager will be sentenced in July following a guilty plea to criminal HIPAA violations for a fraud scheme involving pharmaceutical company Warner Chilcott, which was sentenced to pay $125 million on April 15 to resolve allegations involving illegal drug promotion and paying kickbacks to physicians. Landon Eckles, who earlier pleaded guilty to wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information, is one of several former [...]
