Mass General Hospital Pays $14.6M to Settle Surgery Claims

Boston, Massachusetts-based Massachusetts General Hospital, the largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, has agreed to pay $14.6 million to resolve allegations brought under the Federal and Massachusetts False Claims Acts.

In False Claims Acts cases the relator is the person who brings the claim against the individual or company. In this case, the relator was a former anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The relator claimed that some of Massachusetts General Hospital’s orthopedic surgeons engaged in “overlapping and concurrent surgeries that required two patients to be under anesthesia at the same time.” The relator claimed that this caused Massachusetts General Hospital to “fraudulently” bill Medicare and Medicaid.

According to court documents, relator alleged that the hospital’s use of concurrent surgery “endangered patients” because of the “unnecessarily prolonged administrations of anesthesia.” Relator also alleged that concurrent surgery “violated informed consent.” Additionally, relator argued that concurrent surgery “violated record-keeping regulations” because surgeons did not keep accurate records. Relator also contended that all of this “caused government payors to pay for work that teaching physicians did not do.”

In addition to the settlement payment, Massachusetts General Hospital will also add language to its consent form for Massachusetts-based hospitals. The language aims to inform patients about their surgeon’s overlapping surgery.

Relator filed the original claim in this matter in 2015. In the press release, relator commented, “MGH [Massachusetts General Hospital] has new leadership, and I am pleased this case put us in the position where we could have a dialogue that will improve patient care and, as importantly, transparency.”

Guttman, Buschner & Brooks, PLLC, based in Washington, D.C., is a boutique law firm that focuses on representing whistleblowers under the False Claims Act. In the press release, relator’s lead counsel Reuben Guttman commented, “This lawsuit was a catalyst for an important dialogue that will cause a world-renowned institution to set a precedent for a new standard of care in informed consent for overlapping surgeries.”