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Virginia physician gets 59-year sentence for unneeded patient surgeries, $20M fraud
A Virginia OB-GYN was sentenced May 18 to 59 years in prison for a fraud scheme that caused insurance programs to lose more than $20 million, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Javaid Perwaiz, MD, was sentenced after being convicted last November of 52 counts of healthcare fraud and false statements related to a scheme in which he performed medically unnecessary surgeries, including hysterectomies and improper sterilizations, on his patients.
From about 2010 to 2019, Dr. Perwaiz often falsely told his patients that they needed the surgeries because they had cancer or could avoid cancer, prosecutors said. Additionally, evidence showed Dr. Perwaiz falsified records for his obstetric patients to induce labor early to ensure he was reimbursed for the deliveries and violated Medicaid’s required 30-day waiting period for elective sterilization procedures by backdating records to make it appear that he had complied with the waiting period. Dr. Perwaiz also billed insurance companies for diagnostic procedures that he only pretended to perform at his office, prosecutors said.
“Motivated by his insatiable and reprehensible greed, Perwaiz used an arsenal of horrifying tactics to manipulate and deceive patients into undergoing invasive, unnecessary and devastating medical procedures,” Raj Parekh, acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, stated. “In many instances, the defendant shattered their ability to have children by using fear to remove organs from their bodies that he had no right to take.”
A lawyer representing Dr. Perwaiz told The New York Times that Dr. Perwaiz is appealing the conviction.
JPMorgan launches healthcare company, Morgan Health
JPMorgan Chase on May 20 unveiled its new healthcare company, dubbed Morgan Health, which its top executive told Becker’s Hospital Review can be viewed as a continuation of Haven, an ambitious healthcare venture that recently disbanded.
“We learned a lot from the Haven experience,” Dan Mendelson, CEO of Morgan Health, said. “The Haven experience focused us on primary care, digital medicine and specific populations. … You can see this as a continuation of the work that was started at Haven.”
However, Mr. Mendelson said there are several key differences between Morgan Health and Haven, the healthcare venture launched by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase in 2018. For one, it has a much more simplified business structure, as it is a unit of JPMorgan Chase. Second, it has a philosophy of striking partnerships to meet its goals rather than working from the ground up.
“We don’t want to create things from scratch,” Mr. Mendelson said. “We are going to be collaborating with outstanding healthcare organizations nationally to accomplish our objectives. That’s another piece that differentiates this effort from the prior one.”
Morgan Health said its new business is focused on improving employer-sponsored healthcare in the U.S. and bringing meaningful innovation into the industry by targeting insurance and keeping populations healthy. Success for the company will be measured by whether it improves the Triple Aim: quality of care, access to care and cost to deliver care, Mr. Mendelson said. Morgan Health initially will focus its efforts on improving care for JPMorgan Chase employees, but its long-term goals are to become a leader at improving healthcare in the U.S. and to create a successful model other employers can adopt.
“We come at this with the benefit of having 285,000 employees and dependents,” Mr. Mendelson said. “We have a very strong interest in driving quality improvements for them and also creating models that are reproducible across organizations. We are looking to take a leadership role to improve care in the United States.”
Morgan Health said it has three core focus areas at its launch: improving healthcare by investing $250 million into organizations that are improving employer-sponsored healthcare; piloting new benefits for employees; and promoting healthcare equity for its employees and the broader community.
One employee benefit Morgan Health will be piloting is advanced primary care, Mr. Mendelson said. Morgan Health said it is working to create improved primary care capacity to enable employees to better navigate the healthcare system. One example of this is instead of having employees see just a primary care physician, they would be directed to a clinic that leverages more healthcare talent, such as pharmacists and nurses, to improve health outcomes.
Morgan Health said it will work with a range of partners, including provider groups, health plans and other employers. One such organization is CVS Health/Aetna, which is one of JPMorgan Chase’s insurance carriers, Mr. Mendelson said.
“CVS Health has a lot of innovation within the organization that we are not currently tapping into,” Mr. Mendelson said. “It’s a great example of a great American company that is ripe for further partnership and innovation in this effort.”
Morgan Health initially will have 20 dedicated employees, but Mr. Mendelson said the healthcare unit is tapping talent from other existing departments at JPMorgan Chase, including its legal, communications and benefits departments.
“This is a company that is very passionate about leading; there’s a very deep reservoir of support from the organization to accomplish the objectives,” Mr. Mendelson said. “These are objectives that are hard — it will take us time to accomplish and to show meaningful improvement. But there’s a sense that this is so important that there’s going to be a sustained effort in this regard and that we will achieve our objectives together.”
Prior to joining Morgan Health, Mr. Mendelson served as an operating partner at private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. He also is the founder and former CEO of healthcare advisory firm Avalere Health and worked in the White House Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration.
Mr. Mendelson said his passion for establishing collaborative partnerships in healthcare will help him succeed in his new role.
Health system financial results for Q1
The health systems listed below recently released financial results for the quarter ended March 31.
| Health system | Revenue | Operating income | Net income |
| Atrium Health | $2 billion | -$17.6 million | $279.3 million |
| BayCare Health System | $1.2 billion | $119.4 million | $256.1 million |
| Kaiser Permanente | $23.2 billion | $1 billion | $2 billion |
| Indiana University Health | $1.9 billion | $192.7 million | $330.5 million |
| Community Health Systems | $3 billion | $326 million | -$64 million |
| Erlanger Health System | $260.6 million | $8.1 million | $6.4 million |
| Universal Health Services | $3 billion | $295.7 million | $209.1 million |
| Tenet Healthcare | $4.8 billion | $520 million | $97 million |
| Sutter Health | $3.4 billion | -$49 million | $189 million |
| Providence | $6.4 billion | -$221.9 million | $84.6 million |
| Advocate Aurora | $3.3 billion | $51 million | $351.8 million |
| Allina Health | $1.2 billion | $13.9 million | $83.3 million |
| CommonSpirit Health | $8.8 billion | $539 million | $1.7 billion |
| Hackensack Meridian Health | $1.6 billion | $17.4 million | $142.6 million |
CommonSpirit and Essentia call off 14-hospital deal following nurse complaints
Dive Brief:
- CommonSpirit Health and Essentia Health have called off a deal for Essentia to acquire 14 CommonSpirit facilities in North Dakota and Minnesota, the two Catholic systems announced Tuesday.
- The deal, nixed just four months after being announced, would have doubled the size of Duluth, Minn.-based Essentia’s hospital network. One of the facilities up for grabs, CHI St. Alexius Medical Center, is a tertiary hospital and the other 13 are critical access hospitals. The deal would also have included associated clinics and living communities.
- The systems did not provide details as to why they scrapped the deal in their release, and an Essentia representative did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
Dive Insight:
CommonSpirit and Essentia signed a letter of intent in January to explore the sale, but talks have now fizzled following months of deliberation.
“While we share a similar mission, vision, values and strong commitment to sustainable rural healthcare, CommonSpirit and Essentia were unable to come to an agreement that would serve the best interests of both organizations, the people we employ and the patients we serve,” a joint statement from the two systems said.
Earlier this month, more than 700 nurses and medical workers filed a petition noting their concern over the deal. In the petition, the Minnesota Nurses Association and employees at Essentia and CommonSpirit said they feared layoffs and restricted access to patient care resulting from the acquisition.
Nurses cited Essentia’s partnership with Mercy Hospital in Moose Lake, Minn., last summer, which they claimed hurt the quality of patient care.
“Ever since the takeover, we’ve lost numerous staff, causing shortages in how we care for patients,” a nurse wrote in a news release about the petition May 4. “We don’t want CHI’s hospitals and clinics to lay off workers, cut the services they offer or close entirely.”
Essentia did not respond to a request for comment about whether workers’ concerns affected the decision to call off the deal.
Hospitals maintain consolidation betters the patient experience and improves care quality, but numerous studies have suggested that’s not the case. One from early last year published in the New England Journal of Medicine found acquired hospitals actually saw moderately worse patient experience, along with no change in 30-day mortality or readmission rates, while another from 2019 found mergers and acquisitions drive up prices for consumers.
Despite that, provider mergers and acquisitions have continued at a rapid clip even during COVID-19, as hospitals look to divest underperforming assets and bulk up market share in more lucrative geographies. The letter of intent CommonSpirit signed with Essentia suggests the roughly 140-hospital system is taking stock of its smaller rural facilities.
Chicago-based CommonSpirit was formed in 2019 by the merger of nonprofit giants Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health. The nonprofit giant was hit hard by the pandemic, losing $550 million in the 2020 fiscal year.
HHS asks Supreme Court to keep site-neutral payments in place
Dive Brief:
- The United States Supreme Court should keep in place a lower court ruling that bars hospitals from receiving higher Medicare reimbursements for outpatient services compared to other providers, according to a brief HHS filed late last week.
- The 33-page brief filed with the high court is in response to a petition by the American Hospital Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges to hear the case. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled last July that HHS had the right to cut payments to hospital-owned facilities in order to achieve site neutrality, reversing the judgment of a district court.
- Hospitals and HHS have been wrangling about the issue since the federal agency moved to cut payments to hospital-owned outpatient sites in 2019. The Supreme Court will have the final say, whether it decides to hear the case or not.
Dive Insight:
Site-neutral payments have been a hot button issue in the healthcare world for the better part of a decade, after many larger hospital systems began buying up physician practices. Hospitals are reimbursed by Medicare for evaluation and management services at a higher rate than standalone physician groups.
They began collecting those higher fees at the outpatient sites they acquired or opened. From 2012 to 2015, E&M encounters per Medicare enrollee grew at outpatient sites by 22%, versus a 1% drop at physician practices, HHS noted in its brief.
That strategy not only drove up costs to the Medicare program but also put more pressure on individual medical practices to merge with one another to better compete with hospital-owned practices, or be bought out. HHS attempted to remedy the issue by moving toward a site-neutral payment scheme beginning in 2019. Acute care providers, led by AHA and AAMC, sued to stop the change. They appealed to the Supreme Court last summer.
The brief filed by HHS attorneys with the high court asked that its new site-neutral payment policy be retained. The department argued that it did not act beyond the powers delegated to it by Congress, and that body would remedy such a disturbing financial trend on its own if it needed to.
The likelihood the high court will hear the case is low. Attorneys note that the Supreme Court only agrees to hear no more than 5% of cases brought to it for review that involve a federal agency. Moreover, they are even less likely to act if there is no conflict on the issue between the appeals court — which HHS noted in its brief.
If the Supreme Court declines to hear the case, the appellate court ruling would stand and the site neutral payment rule would remain on the books.
Eli Lilly fires back against HHS order to repay providers for violating 340B
UPDATE: May 21, 2021: Late Thursday, drug manufacturing giant Eli Lilly filed a motion in an Indiana district court to halt 340B-related monetary penalties, scant days after the Biden administration set a June 1 deadline for biopharmaceutical companies to comply with new conditions in the drug discount program and allow hospital contract pharmacies access to discounted drugs.
The suit alleges a Monday letter from Diana Espinosa, acting head of the Health Resources and Services Administration, gives “no legal explanation or justification for the arbitrary June 1 deadline.”
Lilly previously filed an almost identical lawsuit January 2020. The Indianapolis-based biopharma said it expected the government to follow the briefing schedule outlined in that suit before mandating compliance with 340B and forcing it to pay “substantial and irretrievable sums of money.”
“If the Court ultimately decides Lilly was required to extend 340B pricing to contract pharmacies, Lilly will comply with that decision. Conversely, if the Court ultimately decides manufacturers are not required to extend 340B pricing to contract pharmacies, then we surely expect the government will comply with that decision. But there is no explanation or justification for the government’s attempt to make Lilly pay now, other than to evade this Court’s review and leave Lilly without recourse for such payments,” the motion reads.
In the petition, Lilly, which brought in $6.2 billion in profit last year, alleges the shifting terms of the program are due to HHS director Xavier Becerra bending to political pressure to “take action” against drug manufacturers, as pharmaceutical prices continue to climb.
Lilly asked the district court to temporarily block HHS from moving against Lilly until the drugmaker’s request for a preliminary injunction is resolved; and for an accelerated legal schedule to settle its claims before the looming June deadline.
An HRSA spokesperson declined to comment on the suit.
Dive Brief:
- HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration called out six pharmaceutical companies Tuesday for violating rules under the 340B drug discount program, ordering them to repay affected providers for previous overcharges and warning of more penalties if they don’t comply.
- In July 2020 some drugmakers stopped giving the 340B ceiling price on their products sold to covered entities and dispensed through contract pharmacies, while others limited sales by requiring specific data or selling products only after a covered entity demonstrated 340B compliance, according to HRSA.
- In letters from Diana Espinosa, acting administrator of HRSA, the agency requested AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, United Therapeutics, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk and Novartis give an update on their plans to restart selling covered outpatient drugs at the 340B price to covered entities that dispense medications through contract pharmacies by June 1.
Dive Insight:
Providers and drugmakers have sparred for years over the 340B drug discount program that requires pharmaceutical companies to give discounts on outpatient drugs for providers serving low-income communities.
AHA along with five other provider groups in December filed a federal lawsuit against HHS, alleging the department failed to enforce 340B program requirements and allowed actions from drug companies that undermined the program. That lawsuit was later dismissed.
But with the change in administrations, providers now seem to have an ally in the fight.
Previously, as California’s Attorney General, newly minted HHS chief Xavier Becerra led a group of states pushing the agency to force drugmakers to comply with the law late last year.
Provider groups cheered the move after raising the alarm last year that an increasing number of drug companies were refusing to offer discounts to such eligible hospitals.
“The denial of these discounts has damaged providers and patients and must stop. It is vital that these companies immediately begin to repay the millions of dollars owed to these providers,” 340B Health CEO Maureen Testoni said in a statement.
In separate letters to drugmakers, HRSA outlines complaints against them and their actions, ultimately saying their policies violated the statute and resulted in overcharges that need to be refunded. The companies must work to ensure all impacted entities are contacted and efforts are made to pursue mutually agreed upon refund arrangements, according to the letters.
Any additional violations will be subject to a $5,000 penalty for each instance of overcharging under the program’s Ceiling Price and Civil Monetary Penalties final rule.
The American Hospital Association also praised the agency in a release for “taking the decisive action we’ve called for against drug companies that skirt the law by limiting the distribution of certain 340B drugs through community pharmacies.”
Hospitals in the 340B program provide 60% of all uncompensated care in the U.S. and 75% of all hospital care to Medicaid patients, according to 340B Health.
Cartoon – Shift Happens
Cartoon – With Job Growth Increasing
HENRY KOTULA 