On 5th February 2021, John H. Durham, United States Attorney, and Special Agent Phillip Coyne in Charge of the HHS-OIG (United States Health & Human Services Department – Office of the Inspector General) reported that Secon Of New England, LLC, doing business as Secon Laboratories, and Sterling Healthcare Opco, LLC, doing business as Cordant Health Solutions (jointly, “Cordant”) signed a civil settlement deal with the state and federal governments and reimbursed 845,108 U.S. dollars to settle claims that they broke the state and federal False Claims Statutes.
Cordant Health Solutions, located in Denver, Colorado, offers healthcare monitoring and testing services countrywide, such as laboratory services for medication testing. Cordant’s branch, Secon Laboratories, is a lab situated in Worcester, Massachusetts. Crossroads, Inc., Secon’s customer, was a behavioral health residential treatment center based in New Haven, Connecticut. Numerous of the inhabitants of Crossroads were recruited in the Connecticut Medicaid program.
In 2015, Crossroads enacted a policy demanding its inhabitants to submit to regular urine drug screening, mainly for residential nursing purposes. Crossroads ordered definitive (confirmatory) drug tests and presumptive (screening) drug tests for every resident weekly. In numerous cases, Crossroads ordered replica tests for its inhabitants over two times a week, and as repeatedly as three, four, or five times weekly. These medication tests were carried out by Cordant were charged by Cordant to the Connecticut Medicaid program.
The government purports that Cordant understood or should have had knowledge that the tests ordered by Crossroads for its residents over two times a week were medically unnecessary. The Connecticut State and the United States claim that Cordant never reported and returned overpayments for the submissions Connecticut Medicaid reimbursed Cordant for carrying out these medically unnecessary drug tests.
To settle claims under the state and federal False Claims Statutes, Cordant has reimbursed 845,108 U.S. dollars to the government for over reimbursements taking part between 6th October 2015, and 8th February 2017.
The United States Attorney Durham stated that government-sponsored tests should be ordered based on every patient’s medical desires. United States Attorney Durham further noted that labs have an obligation to ensure that the submissions they submit to government-funded health care programs are for medically required testing services. Suppose a lab established that it had carried out and charged for medically unnecessary tests, in that case; it has a responsibility to report and return any over reimbursements and to change its practices.
Special Agent Phillip M. Coyne in Charge of the United States Health & Human Services Department, Office of Inspector General said that this resolution shows the Office of Inspector General’s devotion in ensuring that taxpayer funds are not misused on medically unrequired services. Special Agent Phillip M. Coyne further added that he appreciates the continued collaboration between their Office, the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office, and the Connecticut U.S Attorney’s Office to inquire fraud and to safeguard public cash.
The Connecticut Attorney General’s Office and the HHS-OIG (United States Health & Human Services Department, Office of Inspector General) carried out the investigation of this matter. The United States Attorney Assistant Sara Kaczmarek and Assistant Attorney General Gregory O’Connell of the Office of the Attorney General handled the prosecution of this matter.
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