John Holland, a former executive at Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, is appealing a federal judge's decision allowing kickback charges to be brought against him in an alleged $400 million fraud scheme, reports Reuters.
Here are five things to know:
1. In October 2016, Tenet agreed to pay $514 million to resolve allegations it paid kickbacks in exchange for patient referrals. Although Tenet settled the lawsuit in 2016, the U.S. Justice Department brought charges against Mr. Holland, who previously served as senior vice president of operations for Tenet's Southern states region and as CEO of North Fulton Medical Center in Roswell, Ga., in February 2017.
2. According to the Justice Department, Mr. Holland sidestepped Tenet's internal accounting controls to bribe clinicians and pay illegal kickbacks to clinics in Georgia and South Carolina that referred pregnant patients on Medicaid to Tenet hospitals. The scheme allegedly helped Tenet bill Medicaid programs more than $400 million. As a result, the initial charges against Mr. Holland included one count of healthcare fraud and two counts of major fraud against the U.S.
3. In September 2017, several more charges were brought against Mr. Holland. The latest indictment charged Mr. Holland with conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, wire fraud and falsification of books and records.
4. Lawyers representing Mr. Holland filed a motion in an Atlanta federal court June 15 arguing the September 2017 indictment charging him for conspiring to pay kickbacks to a clinic operator for patient referrals was "legally flawed."
5. Attorneys for the plaintiff argue the indictment “failed to allege the contracts [Mr. Holland] used to pay the hospital operator [Tenet] were not for the fair value of the clinic's services," according to Reuters.