Nursing Facility in California to Pay $3.8 Million for Alleged Kickbacks to Doctors

A Riverside, California skilled nursing facility and its management healthcare services company agreed to pay California and the US $3.825 million to resolve allegations that they paid kickbacks to physicians to induce referrals, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

The companies will pay $3,228,300 to the federal government and $596,700 to California.

Between 2009 and 2019, Alta Vista Healthcare & Wellness Centre, LLC allegedly gave physicians “extravagant gifts, including expensive dinners for the physicians and their spouses, golf trips, limousine rides, massages, e-reader tablets, and gift cards worth up to $1,000” under the direction of Rockport Healthcare Services, a news release from the Justice Department says. The groups “submitted and caused the submission of false claims to Medicare and Medicaid,” prosecutors said.

Read the source article at msn.com