Dive Brief:
- A federal judge has ruled that a Florida hospital accused of paying kickbacks to doctors through bonuses is in the clear on those charges. Halifax Hospital Medical Center, of Daytona Beach, Fla., had been accused of violating the Anti-Kickback Statute.
- However, the hospital still faces charges that it made its Medicare patients for needless for overnight stays.
- The admissions charges resulted from a whistleblower claim by Elin Baklid-Kunz, the hospital's director of physician services, who claimed that Halifax physicians regularly admitted patients from one or two days though the patients did not meet the medical criteria for admission.
Dive Insight:
Halifax is still faces the full wrath of CMS regarding the claims that physicians there were admitting patients who didn't need to be in the hospital. But Halifax was let off the hook regarding the position bonuses courtesy of a "bona fide employment exception" available through the Stark and Anti-Kickback Statutes. The physicians in question were employed, technically, by Halifax Staffing, which the judge found essentially to be an alter ego of Halifax Hospital. Officials there must be breathing a huge sigh of relief, as the Department Of Justice had threatened this summer to demand up to $1 billion in damages and penalties for the cumulative offenses.