Home Health & Hospice Week

How carefully do you listen to your employees' complaints? Whistleblower lawsuits like the recently unsealed one against SouthernCare Inc. hospice can do major damage, but there are important strides you can make to head them off. False Claims Act lawsuits assault providers on multiple fronts. First, they can carry a big price tag due to the treble damages allowed for in the statute. That can result in whopping settlement amounts such as the nearly $25 million payment for SouthernCare (see related story, p. 34). Second, a qui tam lawsuit settlement announcement can do major damage to a provider's image. It's much better to issue a release saying you found and self-reported a problem instead of that you had to settle a whistleblower suit, notes attorney Robert Markette, Jr. with Gilliland, Markette & Milligan in Indianapolis. "That's bad publicity," Markette says. Local news outlets often comb through every unsubstantiated allegation in [...]