On August 18, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) published an Advisory Opinion warning that a common arrangement under which surgeons profit from referrals of their patients for intraoperative neuromonitoring (IONM) services can violate the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS). The Advisory Opinion, the first significant public commentary on…

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey recently announced that Alexander Schleider of Lakewood pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud in a durable medical equipment (DME) kickback scheme.

Schleider owned and operated several DME companies that provided orthotic braces to beneficiaries of Medicare and other healthcare benefit programs regardless of…

On September 14, Rivkin Radler’s Jeff Kaiser will participate on a panel at Practising Law Institute’s Life Sciences 2023: Navigating Legal Challenges in Drug and Device Industries program in New York City.

Held at PLI’s New York Conference Center at 1177 Sixth Avenue, the program will cover the explosive growth of digital health and the…

New York State Attorney General Letitia James recently announced that the owner and manager of Santiago Pharmacy in Flushing, Queens, were indicted for paying kickbacks to Medicaid recipients in exchange for filling their HIV prescriptions at the pharmacy.

Juan Poveda, the owner, and Javier Burbano, the pharmacy manager, were charged with grand larceny, health care…

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently announced that Manasa Health Center in Kendall Park, New Jersey entered into a Resolution Agreement and Corrective Action Plan to resolve a HIPAA Privacy Rule violation. The psychiatric practice, owned by Dr. Nidagalle Gowda, inexplicably disclosed four patients’ protected health information…

In our last installment, we discussed that the dental services industry has undergone large-scale consolidation in recent years, primarily driven by Dental Services Organizations (DSOs) and private investors. We described what a DSO is and why it is a prevalent vehicle through which private investors are seeking to consolidate the dental services industry. We…

The U.S. Department of Justice recently announced that Morris Park Nursing Home, a skilled nursing facility in the Bronx, and two individuals agreed to pay a total of $3.46 million to resolve federal Anti-Kickback Statute and False Claims Act violations. The schemes included paying cash kickbacks to a supervisor at a nearby hospital in exchange…

On June 9, Steven Rodriguez, a former nurse from Long Beach, New York, was sentenced in federal court to 2-1/2 years in prison for selling at least 300 fake COVID-19 vaccination cards. Rodriguez and a co-conspirator from Queens, Jia Liu, had pleaded guilty to the scam. Liu will be sentenced in September.

To cover up…