Ben Lipps, the CEO of Fresenius Medical Care, came by to speak with The WSJ Health Blog this week. The German company runs dialysis centers around the world, so they were eager to ask Lipps about the ongoing controversy over the use of anemia drugs (such as Amgen’s Epogen) at U.S. dialysis centers.
We should not forget that this is the same Fresenius Medical Care of North America, that agreed to pay the United States $486 million to resolve a sweeping investigation of health care fraud at National Medical Care, Inc. (NMC), a kidney dialysis subsidiary owned by Fresenius.
Of this amount, $385,000,00 was recovered under the False Claims Act.
Three NMC subsidiaries also pled guilty to three separate conspiracies and were levied fines of $101 million. Fresenius has also entered into a corporate integrity agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Fresenius/NMC scam involved fraudulent and fictitious blood testing claims by LifeChem, Inc., NMC's clinical blood testing laboratory, kickbacks to dialysis facilities to obtain blood testing contracts for LifeChem, and fraudulent claims submitted to Medicare for intradialytic parenteral nutrition (IDPN), a nutritional therapy provided to patients during their dialysis treatments.
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