Here are the four lawsuits:
1. Three physician whistleblowers collected a portion of a $24.5 million False Claims lawsuit settlement against Tampa, Fla.-based Physician Partners of America, its founder Rodolfo Gari, and its former Chief Medical Officer Abraham Rivera, MD.
Physician Partners is accused of illegally billing federal healthcare programs for unnecessary medical testing and services, illegally paying physician employees 40 percent of the profits from the unnecessary services and making a false statement in connection with a $5.9 million Paycheck Protection Program loan.
2. Physicians won a $15 million settlement in a lawsuit over unpaid bonuses against TeamHealth, a physician staffing firm.The physicians sued TeamHealth and its subsidiary, Paragon Contracting Services, in 2017, alleging the company shorted its emergency physicians on bonus pay tied to relative value units guaranteed by contract. The lawsuit alleges TeamHealth and Paragon paid nurse practitioners and physician assistants to provide services instead.
3. Myron Jones, MD, a physician formerly employed at Atlanta-based Milton Hall Surgical Associates, alleged the group’s founder, owner, medical director and former CEO Jeffrey Gallups, MD, accepted kickbacks from Entellus, a device company, and medical testing lab NextHealth. Dr. Gallups and the practice paid $3 million to resolve the claims, and Dr. Jones received $614,000 in early December.
4. Johnson & Johnson subsidiary DePuy Synthes was ordered to pay Gary Lynn Rasmussen, MD, $20 million after one of its products was found to infringe on one of the orthopedic surgeon’s patents. A federal jury in Massachusetts found that the “Balanced Sizer” product included in DePuy’s Attune knee system infringes on a device invented by Dr. Rasmussen that reshapes bone and cartilage before knee replacement procedures.
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