Two whistleblower physicians accused HCA Healthcare and TeamHealth, both for-profit companies, of defrauding government programs by overcharging for care. The lawsuit was filed under seal in June 2022. The documents were unsealed April 6 of this year when the federal government declined to intervene.
HCA healthcare is based in Nashville, Tennessee, and operates 182 hospitals and more than 2300 care sites in 20 US states and the United Kingdom. HCA’s care sites include urgent care centers, walk-in clinics, surgery centers, diagnostic and imaging centers, and freestanding emergency departments (EDs). TeamHealth is a medical staffing company based in Knoxville and owned by Blackstone, a private equity company. This is not the first time TeamHealth has been sued for fraudulent billing practices, and HCA has previously been sued for similar practices as well.
Scott A. Ramming, MD, and Allen Lalor, MD, the physicians who filed the suit, were long-time employees of the then-nonprofit Mission Hospital System when the hospital was acquired by HCA in 2019. (Lalor has since retired.) In 2020, TeamHealth contracted with HCA to provide physician staffing at Mission Hospital.
Source: Physicians Accuse Hospital Chain of Fraud and Overbilling / Medscape