CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Massachusetts
AG Charges Boston Clinical with False Claims
21 Corporate Crime Reporter 42, October 18, 2007
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has charged Boston Clinical Laboratories,
Inc. with violating the state’s False Claims Act.
The complaint alleges that the company intentionally filed claims and received reimbursement for urine drug screens which were improperly ordered.
Coakley alleged that since January 2000, Boston Clinical has submitted more than 66,000 claims for urine drug screens to Medicaid.
Many, if not all, of these urine drug screen claims were not properly ordered by an authorized prescriber or were ordered for non-medical purposes – such as residential sobriety monitoring.
Coakley said the lawsuit is the result of an ongoing industry-wide investigation into the Massachusetts independent clinical laboratories' urine drug screen billing practices by Attorney General Coakley's Medicaid Fraud Division.
Last month, Coakley's office entered into a settlement agreement with Willow Street Medical Laboratory, LLC, an independent clinical laboratory in Lynn, settling allegations of overpayment and inappropriate referrals.
In addition to reimbursing the state in the amount of $8.15 million, Willow Street Laboratory agreed to institute a comprehensive compliance program to ensure full compliance with all state laws and Medicaid regulations in the future.
The Massachusetts Medicaid Program's annual expenditures on urine drug screening services have doubled in the last four years, and the program currently spends more than $31 million dollars per year for urine drug screening services provided in large part to substance abuse treatment programs, halfway houses, shelters and sober houses.
State and federal regulations require that in order for laboratory services to be properly paid for by the Medicaid program they must be ordered by a physician or other authorized prescriber must be ordered for a medically necessary purpose.
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