Tony Kite filed a lawsuit claiming Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center (OLL) and Lourdes Center of Burlington County(LMC) fraudulently inflated its charges to Medicare patients to obtain enhanced reimbursement from Medicare. Congress enacted the supplemental “outlier payments” and Medicare provides such payments to give hospitals incentives to treat inpatients whose cost of care is unusually high. According to the DoJ, the lawsuit alleged that the hospital inflated its charges to obtain supplemental outlier payments for cases that were not extraordinarily costly and for which outlier payments should not have been paid. The Hospitals are to pay $7.95 million to settle False Claims Act allegations. Mr. Kite will receive $356,000, plus interest, out of the OLL settlement. Mr. Kite brought his case under the qui tam whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act which allow private citizens to bring a lawsuit on behalf of the government and share in any recovery if they have knowledge of fraudulent acts against the government.

To report Medicare fraud, contact Frohsin & Barger.